A young, optimist white teacher in New York takes a job at an all-Black school, determined to break through to his students and properly teach them, despite being stuck in a school system that has continually failed them.

An apathetic elementary school teacher learns the true meaning of her role when she and her student become victims of a violent pair of intruders.

After taking sudden interest in one of his students, a disgruntled New York public school teacher realizes his assumptions about the apathy of his class are completely wrong.

A creative writing teacher sits through a conference with one his favorite students. He takes us on a journey through the characters in the story, and in his life.

Having poured 53 years of her life into the creation of a refined girl’s school, principal Miss Bird despairs in the changing of the times and gradual sapping of her powers into the hands of a new board, finally slapping the daughter of the chairman in the face in her all-consuming anger.

A teacher finds herself entangled in the life of a mesmerising student, only to learn that everything he told her about himself was a lie.

A teacher reminisces about all his wonderful students of the Narrative Studies courses he has taught around the world before his career comes to an end.

After one of her young low-income students shows up to class disheveled, a female teacher from Chicago makes it her mission to create a strong bond with the girl in hopes it will prevent her from dropping out of school.

A schoolteacher at a newly desegregated Southern school agonizes over whether to turn a Black student in for the murder of a white boy in an alley fight, in order to prevent a white mob from murdering the student's friends and family. The Black student explains he didn't commit the murder and only acted in self-defense, but he insists on turning himself in to protect his neighborhood.

An overbearingly strict schoolteacher wages a private war against his young, partying neighbors.