Abbott Elementary's Season 5 Premiere Had A Lot Of Moving And Shaking, And I Need To Talk About One Specific Change

Spoilers for Abbott Elementary’s Season 5 premiere are ahead! To catch up, you can stream new episodes the day after they air on ABC with a Hulu subscription.

It’s back-to-school season, and the fall premieres are upon us on the 2025 TV schedule, which means it’s time to watch Season 5 of Abbott Elementary and talk about it. There’s a lot to talk about, too! Over the summer, there’s been a lot of moving and shaking in this Philadelphia school, both personally and professionally. However, there’s one change among the teachers that I really loved, and I need to talk about it.

Now, Janine is getting a bigger class and was trying on new personalities. A new teacher, played by Shrinking’s Luke Tennie, was introduced. Barbara found her “groove” with music class. Also, Ava was creating new HR violations by flaunting her relationship with O’Shon.

Meanwhile, Melissa is taking on an entirely new position. That’s right, the once second-grade teacher has now moved upstairs, where her housemate Jacob works, to teach middle school math. It’s this change that I’m the most excited about.

I was honestly thrilled about it from the jump, because of all the elementary teachers, Lisa Ann Walter’s character feels the most equipped to take on middle schoolers. Plus, her Philly toughness going up against tweens is bound to be hilarious.

What makes it even better is the fact that this episode sets up just how challenging it might be for her. I was laughing so hard watching Jacob and Morton pretend to be middle schoolers as they simulated what it was like to teach them. It’s not often we see Ms. Schemmenti playing defense, but she was in this exchange:

• Morton: Look, these kids are mean. One told me: ‘That’s why your bitch left you, bitch.’
• Melissa: I think you’re overdoing it on the b-word.
• Jacob: I don’t think he’s doing it enough. ‘Hey, why’d you rat out you’re brother and get him locked up?’
• Melissa: What?!? That never happened!
• Jacob: And scene. I was being a kid, we live in a post-truth landscape, and these kids hit below the belt.
• Morton: Which is where you haven’t been touched in years. Snitch, unless you count Sweetcheecks.
• Melissa: You keep my son’s name out of your filthy mouth.

You know something is intense when Morton and Jacob are a united front about it, and that’s for sure the case with how ruthless middle schoolers can be. So, I’m looking forward to Melissa finding her footing and eventually ruling her classroom (because I know she will). I’m positive it’ll be funny to see her handle tweens for the first time while simultaneously trying to teach math, and I can’t wait to watch it.

I also love this change because it marks a major shift in the teaching staff at Abbott. While we’ve seen Janine go to work at the district, and Ava got fired last season with Gregory stepping in as interim principal, we’ve never seen our core crew of teachers change grades before.

It’s something that happens frequently in schools in real life, and I figured it was bound to happen on Abbott, and personally, I think it happened to the best person. I can’t wait to see Melissa wrangle middle schoolers while Jacob gets put in a position to help her, because he’s the expert here.

It has the makings of being comedy gold, and you better believe I’ll be watching on ABC on Wednesdays at 8:30 p.m. ET or with my Hulu subscription the next day to see how all of this goes down as Season 5 of Abbott Elementary continues.