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 low-income Hispanic fisherman struggling to support his ill wife risks his career and legal autonomy when he agrees to go on a fishing trip with a careless co-worker who is storing a large sum of money near the fisherman's property.

A young girl wants to be a religious saint and tries to figure out what kind of sacrifice will be big enough for God to make her one.

A low-income, single mom ponders how to comfort her son, who struggles to make friends at school. Even though she's been saving for a new dryer for months, she decides to buy him a robot at the local pawn shop.

A woman goes to see her son in prison with a birthday surprise from his sister: a colonist on a spaceship on a voyage to another planet. On her way to visit, her luck runs out: though she's able to get into the prison and show the son her video blog, the spaceship where her daughter resides has caught fire.

In inner-city 1980s Boston, a middle-school boy must care for himself and his baby half-brother when their mother runs away to Texas.