Frustrated by her dyslexic daughter's struggles at a failing inner-city school, Jamie Fitzpatrick tries to enroll her somewhere else. When this fails, Jamie recruits a disillusioned but caring teacher to try to fix the broken school.

A true story about a teacher in a racially divided school who gives her students what they've always needed: a voice. Erin Gruwell comes to a southern California high school bubbling over with naive optimism. She quickly discovers that her unruly classroom is not easily won over by her good intentions. After a few floundering attempts to connect with her students, Gruwell gives them the assignment of keeping journals about their own lives, This assignment...

Sweet, innocent Megan's ballet dreams are shattered when she is forced to attend an inner-city high school where she meets Thomas, a young hip-hop dancer from the wrong side of the tracks. With a new crew of friends, this suburban girl with no street 'cred, ' has to step up her game and achieve her dreams in the mother of all dance-offs.

Vanessa Martin dreams of following in the footsteps of the first black Miss America, Vanessa Williams, but the odds are against her until a new teacher at school organizes a beauty pageant and encourages Vanessa to enter.

A nightclub singer is forced to take refuge from the mob in a convent. While there she turns the convent choir into a "soulful chorus of swingin' sisters." The sudden celebrity of the choir jeopardizes her identity. Whoopi Goldberg returns as the lounge singer who goes undercover as a nun to help an ailing inner-city school.