A seventh-grade English teacher copes with the recent death of her father and assigns a memoir that her students love reading. However, their parents question her for her pedagogical choices because of the swear words and provocative topics in the book.

A college professor sets out to show his elderly mother the simple joys of life and ends up learning about happiness and logic from her instead.

As an old woman revisits her family's quintessentially American history, she finds a way to respect and love her parents, despite the scandals and tragedies they endured.

After they have been removed from their parents and send to a camp to be brainwashed, two girls connect over an act of institutional rebellion. One suffers for it, and one goes on to live her life as she is supposed to—but will she be satisfied with leaving things alone?

An elderly wizard senses an impending earthquake and asks a former student to help him stop the damage. He also calls upon the transformative magic once taught to him by a cherished female mentor in order to stabilize the ground, becoming irreversibly one with the earth in the process.

A former nun turned high school principal must contend with an incompetent and apathetic teacher at her high school.

An American college student teaches English to a German Jewish refugee who is preparing to give a lecture. As World War II begins, the refugee cannot break his writers block and his tutor begins to fear the refugee may die by suicide.

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 second-generation Russian immigrant living in contemporary Michigan finds himself caught up in a sad but emotive group of friends when he takes a continuing education course on Intermediate German.

In a society where civilians are monitored by personality tests that surveil whether they are being perfect citizens, a 1970s high school teacher meets an over-achieving student who forces him to confront the forced boredom dominating his own life.