This movie has always been one of my favorites growing up because I always wished I had a teacher like Ms. G who cared about me and my fellow students just like she cared about the students she had. I understand the context of this movie because I grew up in Southern California and it is not a safe neighborhood at some parts. You would not believe all of the people that I go to school with that are a part of gangs. There is so much gang violence and peers of mine getting killed by accident or just because they said something that wasn't part of their "culture ". I grew up in classes almost my whole high school career and even in middle and elementary school with the same group of peers and that really helped us all out a lot by having one another there to lean on.
Ms. G had never taught before. She was a brand new teacher and didn't know how to handle conflict or take control of her students. She was warned that the kids all came from really difficult backgrounds and didn't really care about things or even school. She was also told by someone high up in the school that what she had planned for the students is stuff that the student won't be able to get and for her to change her lesson plans. Being a first time teacher was not going to stop her from trying to invest in these kids' lives. She takes it upon herself to show the people that think her students are worthless and can't achieve anything that they are worth something and that they are smarter than what people make them out to be. They are not all bad kids at all. They just come from trouble backgrounds. On her first day in the classroom, a fight breaks out between two students who are from different backgrounds over the differences that they have. She doesn't have a clue on how to teach the kids and struggles to try and keep them under control due to all the racial differences in her classroom.
She finally gets to the point because of all the nasty remarks they made about things, she separated the different cliques and explained to them what the real issue was.