Keisha's son attends a bankrupt public school system where the all-white teaching staff are abusive and physically violent towards the majority-black student body. She'll do anything to give her child a better life, even if it means forging papers that say she lives in a different neighborhood.

A high school boy makes a habit of stealing cars, picking up girls, and skipping school. When he begins to worry that he is getting into too much trouble, the boy must decide whether to seek help or continue his criminal lifestyle.

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.

A series of interconnected vignettes and characters explores themes of race, incarceration, family, heartbreak, and love.

A young Black girl in a severely underfunded public school is punished for bullying another girl. As she reflects on the events that pushed her toward aggression and her reason for choosing her specific victim, she realizes she doesn't wish to apologize after all.

In a school full of refugees and immigrants in early 2000s America, a teacher shares his traumas with his math class. Meanwhile, a cop tries to prevent a young Vietnamese boy from murdering a fellow student.

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.

A large factory is shut down in a small town in Illinois, and the town's residents face a sudden economic depression — until a prison is built where the factory had been, invigorating the economy but bringing along with it unintended consequences.

A boy at a boarding school writes a letter back to his mother. He fights back tears and must face another harassment from his bullies.

An embittered teacher takes an inner-city Black boy under her wing and discovers his immense academic and personal gifts. But even as he begins to escape the drugs that have defined his upbringing, dealing threatens to tear his loved ones away forever.