The year is 1974. Chicago is rife with gang wars, corruption, and racial tensions. Dawson Skill Center is an adult education/vocational training facility located in the Robert Taylor Homes, a low income housing development on Chicago's Southside. This is the environment into which recent college graduate Lauren Gates is thrust. She is one of two non-black faces in the entire facility. Naïve and optimistic, she takes a job teaching the GED program firmly convinced that she can make a difference. What she couldn't know is that one of her students would change her life forever. From the opulent lifestyle of the wealthy North Shore suburbs of Chicago to the pot smoking college campus scene and on into the desolation, dishonesty and despair of the vertical ghettos of the Southside of Chicago; we follow Lauren on her journey of self-awareness. She is gently aided on that journey by the most unlikely guide; Willie Taylor, one of her students and a man that seems to know exactly what she needs to not only make it through her experience at Dawson Skill Center but to navigate her future as well.