Ahead of the Class

In the fall of 1994, a teacher at Chicago's run-down Steinmetz High conspires with the school's academic decathlon team to cheat on an academic competition.

When Mr. Deen discovers one of his students has been living out of his car and thrown into jail, he decides to bail him out. Determined to curb Nate’s self-destructive behavior, Deen quickly discovers a host of dark secrets slowly tearing Nate apart. What began as a good deed becomes a desperate fight to save Nate from his own demons. As Nate spirals deeper into despair, Deen must decide how far he’s willing to go to save a kid on the brink of losing everything—even himself.

When principal Joe Clark takes over decaying Eastside High School, he's faced with students wearing gang colors and graffiti-covered walls. Determined to do anything he must to turn the school around, he expels suspected drug dealers, padlocks doors and demands effort and results from students, staff and parents. Autocratic to a fault, this real-life educator put it all on the line.

Jealousy flares after the headmistress of an elite boarding school for girls becomes obsessed with a new student.

Defiant young activists take the women's suffrage movement by storm, putting their lives at risk to help American women win the right to vote.

Time passes and tension mounts in a Florida police station as an estranged interracial couple awaits news of their missing teenage son.

Over one intense day, the devoted head teacher of a last-chance reform school strives to keep his students in line while facing pressures of his own.

A drama teacher's taboo relationship with an unstable student strikes a nerve in her jealous classmate, sparking a vengeful chain of events within their suburban high school that draws parallels to "The Crucible".

An acclaimed stage performer, Dorothy still struggled with the challenge of her color, in a time that wouldn't let some stars in by the front door. Yet against the odds she beat out many more famous rivals for the role of "Carmen Jones", becoming the first black woman ever nominated for a Best Actress Academy Award. Marriages and affairs would break her heart, but her heart was strong. Seductive and easily seduced, she was born to be a star - with all the glory and all the pain of being loved, abused, cheated, glorified, undermined and undefeated. Here was a woman who wouldn't wait in the wings. Halle Berry stars as Dorothy Dandrige.

When teacher Randall Thomasson is killed during a carjacking, an unexpected visitor shows up at his funeral - his estranged brother, Karl Thomasson. An ex-Green Beret turned mercenary, Karl signs on as a new substitute teacher in order to investigate Randall's murder.

During the 1976 Soweto uprising, a white school teacher's life and values are threatened when he asks questions about the death of a young black boy who died in police custody.

The story of a mentally anguished high school history teacher going through a complete reassessment of his life. His method for reassessing his life is to narrate it to his class and interweave in it three generations of his family's history.