Best movies like Won't Back Down

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A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Won't Back Down Starring Viola Davis, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Ving Rhames, Lance Reddick, and more. If you liked Won't Back Down then you may also like: Unexpected, Up the Down Staircase, Wadjda, Nightjohn, Race the Sun and many more popular movies featured on this list. You can further filter the list even more or get a random selection from the list of similar movies, to make your selection even easier.

Jamie Fitzpatrick and Nona Alberts are two women from opposites sides of the social and economic track, but they have one thing in common: a mission to fix their community's broken school and ensure a bright future for their children. The two women refuse to let any obstacles stand in their way as they battle a bureaucracy that's hopelessly mired in traditional thinking, and they seek to re-energize a faculty that has lost its passion for teaching.

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Unexpected

An inner-city high school teacher discovers she is pregnant at the same time as one of her most promising students and the two develop an unlikely friendship while struggling to navigate their unexpected pregnancies.

Up the Down Staircase

Sylvia, a novice schoolteacher, is hired to teach English in a high school, but she’s met with an apathetic faculty, a delinquent student body and an administration that drowns its staff in paperwork. The following days go from bad to worse as Sylvia struggles to reach her most troubled students.

Wadjda

An enterprising Saudi girl signs on for her school's Quran recitation competition as a way to raise the remaining funds she needs in order to buy the green bicycle that has captured her interest.

Nightjohn

John is a man of many talents, including one forbidden skill: he can read. When he teaches a young slave girl named Sarny to read and write, she learns an unforgettable lesson about the power of words and the true meaning of freedom.

Race the Sun

A bunch of high school misfits in Hawaii, introduced by their new teacher, attend a science fair in which they draw up inspiration to build their own solar car and win a trip to compete in the 1990 World Solar Challenge in Australia.

The Ryan White Story

The story of Ryan White, a 13-year-old haemophiliac who contracted AIDS from factor VIII, which was used to control this disorder.

Knights of the South Bronx

A business man decides that he wants to teach school in the inner city and chooses a tough school in the South Bronx. He teaches the children how to play the game of chess, and along the way they learn a lot about life.

Homeless to Harvard: The Liz Murray Story

Based on a true story. Liz Murray is a young girl who is taken care of by her loving, but drug-addicted parents. Liz becomes homeless at 15 and after a tragedy comes upon her, she begins her work to finish high school.

A Child Is Waiting

Dr. Matthew Clark is the head of a state institution for intellectually disabled children. Jean Hansen, a former music teacher anxious to give her life some meaning, joins the staff of the hospital. Jean, who tries to shelter the children with her love, suspiciously regards Dr. Clark's stern training methods. She becomes emotionally involved with 12-year-old Reuben Widdicombe, who has been abandoned by his divorced parents.

Taken from Me: The Tiffany Rubin Story

In 2008, New York mother Tiffany Rubin faced every parent's worst nightmare when her six year old son Kobe vanished into thin air. Upon learning that Kobe had been kidnapped by his biological father and taken to South Korea, Tiffany seeks the assistance of American Association for Lost Children representative Mark Miller, who guides her through the arduous process of traveling to Korea, and getting Kobe back.

6.8 / 10 1974 Drama
suggested by: starstruck

Conrack

A young, white school teacher is assigned to Yamacraw Island, an isolated fishing community off the coast of South Carolina, populated mostly by poor black families. He finds that the basically illiterate, neglected children there know so little of the world outside their island.

The Help

Aibileen Clark is a middle-aged African-American maid who has spent her life raising white children and has recently lost her only son; Minny Jackson is an African-American maid who has often offended her employers despite her family's struggles with money and her desperate need for jobs; and Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan is a young white woman who has recently moved back home after graduating college to find out her childhood maid has mysteriously disappeared. These three stories intertwine to explain how life in Jackson, Mississippi revolves around "the help"; yet they are always kept at a certain distance because of racial lines.

Freedom Writers

A young teacher inspires her class of at-risk students to learn tolerance, apply themselves, and pursue education beyond high school.

7.6 / 10 2001 Drama
suggested by: user390oky9ujmo

I Am Sam

Sam, a neurodivergent man, has a daughter with a homeless woman who abandons them when they leave the hospital, leaving Sam to raise Lucy on his own. But as Lucy grows up, Sam's limitations as a parent start to become a problem and the authorities take her away. Sam convinces high-priced lawyer Rita to take his case pro bono and in turn teaches her the value of love and family.

Little Man Tate

Dede is a sole parent trying to bring up her son Fred. When it is discovered that Fred is a genius, she is determined to ensure that Fred has all the opportunities that he needs, and that he is not taken advantage of by people who forget that his extremely powerful intellect is harboured in the body and emotions of a child.

The Single Moms Club

A group of single moms are brought together in the aftermath of an incident at their children's school.

Stand and Deliver

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.

Girl in Progress

As single mom Grace juggles work, bills, and her affair with a married doctor, her daughter, Ansiedad, plots a shortcut to adulthood after finding inspiration in the coming-of-age stories she's reading for school.

Madame Sousatzka

In London, eccentric piano instructor Madame Sousatzka takes on a new prize protégé, Manek, a teenage Bengali immigrant who displays incredible talent. Manek forms a close bond with his teacher, but soon discovers that she expects her pupils to become disciplined in all areas of life, and not just behind the piano

House of Cards

When Ruth Matthews's husband is killed in a fall at an archaeological dig, her daughter Sally handles her father's death in a very odd manner. As Sally's condition worsens, Ruth takes her to see Jake, an expert in childhood autism. Jake attempts to bring Sally out of her mental disarray through traditional therapy methods, but Ruth takes a different route. She risks her own sanity by attempting to enter her daughter's mind and make sense of the seemingly bizarre things that Sally does, including building a wondrous house of cards

An Invisible Sign

Mona Gray is a 20-year-old loner who, as a child, turned to math for salvation after her father became ill. As an adult, Mona now teaches the subject and must help her students through their own crises.

Daria in 'Is It Fall Yet?'

Daria is a 16-year-old girl who is a little too smart and funny to fit in with the crowd. It’s summertime and the livin' is hard. Daria finds herself forced into volunteering at the OK To Cry Corral, a summer camp for the overly sensitive and those who'd like to be.

7.3 / 10 1989 Drama
suggested by: RainbowRhino

Lean On Me

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.

Lloyd

A boy learns that confidence and self-esteem are the greatest gifts.

The Miracle Worker

Devoted teacher Anne Sullivan leads deaf, blind and mute Helen Keller out of solitude and helps integrate her into the world.

Music of the Heart

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

Akeelah and the Bee

Akeelah is a precocious 11-year-old girl from south Los Angeles with a gift for words. Despite her mother's objections, Akeelah enters various spelling contests, for which she is tutored by the forthright Dr. Larabee, her principal Mr. Welch, and the proud residents of her neighborhood. Akeelah's aptitude earns her an opportunity to compete for a spot in the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

Ruby Bridges

When six-year-old Ruby Bridges is chosen to be the first African-American to integrate her local elementary school, she is subjected to the true ugliness of racism for the first time.

To Sir, with Love II

After thirty years teaching in London, Mark Thackeray retires and returns to Chicago. There, however, the challenge of teaching kids in an inner city school proves to be too much to resist.

Skin

Based on the true story of a black girl who was born to two white Afrikaner parents in South Africa during the apartheid era.

Song for a Raggy Boy

William Franklin is a teacher who was born in Ireland and moved to the United States only to repatriate in 1939 after his leftist political views cause him to lose his job. Franklin becomes the first non-cleric instructor at St. Jude's, a school for wayward boys run by Brother John, who is a firm believer in strong discipline.

Gifted

Frank, a single man raising his child prodigy niece Mary, is drawn into a custody battle with his mother.

The First Grader

The true story of an 84 year-old Kenyan villager and ex Mau Mau freedom fighter who fights for his right to go to school for the first time to get the education he could never afford.

Lower Learning

Barry Goldwater Elementary is on the brink of collapse: the lowest test scores in the state, teachers who are either drunk or having sex on school grounds, and a principal who extorts money from parents. It's up to Tom, the down-on-his-luck vice-principal, to rally the lazy teachers, expose the principal's corruption, and turn the school around before an end of the day board decision.

Beyond the Blackboard

Inspired by a true story, “Beyond the Blackboard” is about a 24-year-old first-time teacher who makes a difference in the lives of the homeless children she teaches in a shelter’s makeshift classroom. Set in 1987 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, this movie tells the story a brand-new teacher and Mom who is given a tougher than expected teaching job and winds up teaching homeless children in a school that is housed in a room and called, literally, The School with No Name. She has some personal prejudicial hurdles to cross before she is able to be a true teacher for these children and of course there are hurdles like the lack of books and supplies.

Goodbye, Mr. Chips

In the later years of the nineteenth century Latin master Mr. Chipping is the mainstay of Brookfields boys boarding school, a good teacher and a kindly person but he is considered to be married to the job so that it is a surprise when, on a walking holiday, he meets and marries the vivacious Kathie,who becomes his helpmate at the school but sadly pre-deceases him. Just before World War One insensitive new headmaster Ralston tries to edge Chipping out but the boys rally and Sir John Rivers, an old pupil of Chipping's and now head of the board of governors, invites him to stay and,when the war breaks out and Ralston joins up, Chipping becomes the new head.

My Ain Folk

When Jamie's maternal grandmother dies, he and his brother Tommy are separated - Tommy is taken off to a welfare home and Jamie goes to live with his other grandmother and uncle. His life is far from happy, filled with silence, rejection and bouts of violence.

A Place for Annie

Baby Annie is HIV positive and has been left in the clinic by her drug addicted mother. To prevent that she's deported to a home where they'd just wait for her to die, nurse Susan takes charge of Annie at her home. Two years later she plans too adopt her -- but suddenly Annie's mother reappears and demands her back. And under the law, Susan, as foster-mother, has no claim to the child.

Front of the Class

A boy with Tourette's syndrome overcomes criticism and discrimination to achieve his dream of becoming a teacher.

4.0 / 10 1994 Drama
suggested by: user2418hgo3jlg

Cries from the Heart

Michael, a young autistic boy who has trouble with verbalization but a real talent for technology, uses a computer to plead for help after being molested at his school.

Miracle Run

Corinne is a single mother of twin 5-year-old boys, Steven and Phillip, who are diagnosed with autism. Public school officials threaten to remove them from school due to their behavior, but through therapy, the boys are able to make major strides in their capabilities. A decade later, teens Steven and Phillip seek to prove they can handle high school while still struggling with their disorder.

The Miracle Worker

The true story of Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan, a gripping battle to overcome impossible obstacles and the struggle to communicate. As a young girl, Helen Keller is stricken with scarlet fever. The illness leaves her blind, mute, and deaf. Sealed off from the world, Helen cannot communicate with anyone, nor anyone with her. Often frustrated and desperate, Helen flies into uncontrollable rages and tantrums that terrify her hopeless family. The gifted teacher Annie Sullivan is summoned by the family to help the girl understand the world from which she is isolated, freeing Helen Keller from her internal prison forever. Television remake of the 1962 film which also starred Patty Duke in the role of Helen Keller.

The Ron Clark Story

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.

Radical

In a Mexican border town plagued by neglect, corruption, and violence, a frustrated teacher tries a radical new method to break through his students’ apathy and unlock their curiosity, their potential… and maybe even their genius. Based on a true story.

Critical Thinking

Based on a true story from 1998, five Latino and Black teenagers from the toughest underserved ghetto in Miami fight their way into the National Chess Championship under the guidance of their unconventional but inspirational teacher.

The Pregnancy Project

The Pregnancy project tells the real story of Gaby Rodriguez, a seventeen-year-old who attended a Washington state high-school and made her senior school project the treatment of pregnant teenagers by pretending to be pregnant.

Heaven's Door

12-year-old Riley Ann Taylor recently lost her grandfather, who died right in front of her while teaching her how to play soccer. She soon finds a portal leading to the place people talk about but never see: Heaven. She gains a miraculous healing ability and uses it to help those who are sick but soon gains the diseases these people and animals had. You know what they say, every good thing comes with a price.

The Fat Boy Chronicles

Jimmy always gets teased by the football team for being overweight. As a school assignment he writes about it in his journal, but soon he finds out that he's not the only kid in school with problems.

5.8 / 10 2012 Drama TV Movie
suggested by: user207es0xqx00

Firelight

Incarcerated women join a band of volunteers who battle forest fires and assist during natural disasters.

Toe to Toe

Out on the lacrosse pitch, wealthy but troubled Jesse and poor but driven Tosha form an easy and deep bond, but their relationship is threatened once they enter the hallways of an elite prep school they attend in Washington, D.C. There, they must work to overcome racial and other tensions in their classmates, and in themselves, if they hope to keep their friendship alive.

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