23 Best Movies Like Freedom Writers ...

1h 39m Drama

Former Marine Louanne Johnson lands a gig teaching in a pilot program for bright but underachieving teens at a notorious inner-city high school. After having a terrible first day, she decides she must throw decorum to the wind. When Johnson returns to the classroom, she does so armed with a no-nonsense attitude informed by her military training and a fearless determination to better the lives of her students -- no matter what the cost.

2h 16m Drama History

Based on a true story, in which Richmond High School head basketball coach Ken Carter made headlines in 1999 for benching his undefeated team due to poor academic results.

1h 48m Drama

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.

1h 53m Drama

After leading his football team to 15 winning seasons, coach Bill Yoast is demoted and replaced by Herman Boone – tough, opinionated and as different from the beloved Yoast as he could be. The two men learn to overcome their differences and turn a group of hostile young men into champions.

2h 5m Drama Action Crime

Teenagers at a juvenile detention center, under the leadership of their counselor, gain self-esteem by playing football together.

1h 30m TV Movie Drama

A passionate and innovative teacher leaves his small hometown to teach in one of Harlem's toughest schools. But to break through to this students, Ron Clark must use unconventional methods, including his ground-breaking classroom rules, to drive them toward their potential.

1h 43m Drama

Jaime Escalante is a mathematics teacher in a school in a hispanic neighbourhood. Convinced that his students have potential, he adopts unconventional teaching methods to try and turn gang members and no-hopers into some of the country's top algebra and calculus students.

2h 16m Drama

Gus Van Sant tells the story of a young African American man named Jamal who confronts his talents while living on the streets of the Bronx. He accidentally runs into an old writer named Forrester who discovers his passion for writing. With help from his new mentor Jamal receives a scholarship to a private school.

1h 48m Comedy Music Drama

A former professional dancer volunteers to teach dance in the New York public school system and, while his background first clashes with his students' tastes, together they create a completely new style of dance. Based on the story of ballroom dancer, Pierre Dulane.

1h 45m Drama

Idealistic engineer-trainee and his experiences in teaching a group of rambunctious white high school students from the slums of London's East End.

1h 42m Drama Crime

A high school basketball player’s life turns upside down after free-falling into the harrowing world of drug addiction.

2h 6m Drama

The true story of a brilliant but politically radical debate team coach who uses the power of words to transform a group of underdog African-American college students into a historical powerhouse that took on the Harvard elite.

1h 55m Drama

With the help of their high school's newest teacher, four Hispanic students form a robotics club. Although they have no experience, the youths set their sights on a national robotics contest. With $800 and parts scavenged from old cars, they build a robot and compete against reigning champion MIT. Along the way, the students learn not only how to build a robot but something far more important: how to forge bonds that will last a lifetime.

1h 35m Drama TV Movie

"Front of the Class" is based on the true story of Brad Cohen -- played in the movie by Jimmy Wolk -- who, after being challenged by Tourette's syndrome from a very young age, defies all odds to become a gifted teacher

1h 41m Drama

Life of a King is the true story of one man's mission to give inner city kids of Washington DC something he never had - a future. After being incarcerated for eighteen years, Eugene Brown established the Big Chair Chess Club to get kids off the streets and working towards lives they never believed they were capable of. This is his inspirational story.

2h 4m Drama

Story of a schoolteacher's struggle to teach violin to inner-city Harlem kids.

2h 4m Drama

Sylvia Barrett is a rookie teacher at New York's inner-city Calvin Coolidge High: her lit classes are overcrowded, a window is broken, there's no chalk, books arrive late. The administration is concerned mainly with forms and rules (there's an up and and a down staircase); bells ring at the wrong time. Nevertheless, she tries. How she handles the chaos and her despair in her first semester makes up the film: a promising student drops out, another sleeps through class, a girl with a crush on a male teacher gets suicidal, and a bright but troublesome student misunderstands Sylvia's reaching out. A discussion of Dickens, parents' night, and a mock trial highlight the term. Can she make it?

1h 48m Family Drama

Based on the true story of Homer Hickam, a coal miner's son who was inspired by the first Sputnik launch to take up rocketry against his father's wishes, and eventually became a NASA scientist.

1h 46m Drama

The true story of the frightening, lonely world of silence and darkness of 7-year-old Helen Keller who, since infancy, has never seen the sky, heard her mother's voice or expressed her innermost feelings. Then Annie Sullivan, a 20-year-old teacher from Boston, arrives. Having just recently regained her own sight, the no-nonsense Annie reaches out to Helen through the power of touch, the only tool they have in common, and leads her bold pupil on a miraculous journey from fear and isolation to happiness and light.

1h 35m Drama TV Movie

"Front of the Class" is based on the true story of Brad Cohen -- played in the movie by Jimmy Wolk -- who, after being challenged by Tourette's syndrome from a very young age, defies all odds to become a gifted teacher

1h 52m Drama Crime

Boyz n the Hood is the popular and successful film and social criticism from John Singleton about the conditions in South Central Los Angeles where teenagers are involved in gun fights and drug dealing on a daily basis.

1h 55m Drama

When a son and mother move to Seattle in hopes for a better life, the mother meets a seemingly polite man. Things go south when the man turns out to be abusive, endangering their lives. As the mother struggles to maintain hope in an impossible situation, the son has plans to escape.