The story follows teacher Ron Clark who leaves his small hometown hoping to teach in New York City. He gets a job at a struggling school in Harlem teaching a low-performing 6th grade class. The students are rude to Clark at first but he works hard to connect with them, visiting their homes to better understand them. With innovative teaching methods and strong encouragement of his students, Clark is able to significantly improve their academic performance over the year, with one student even achieving a perfect score, something never seen in the district before.