Shareeka Epps

The Winning Season -- A misfit guy (Sam Rockwell) is brought on to coach the local girls' high school basketball team, but he never imagined how this experience would alter his life and theirs.

Half Nelson -- A powerful, award-winning film about an inner-city junior high school teacher (Ryan Gosling, The Notebook) with a drug habit who forms an unlikely friendship with one of his students (Shareeka Epps) after she discovers his secret.

Searching for a coach for his hapless girls' basketball team, school principal Terry turns to his friend, Bill, a divorced, drunken dishwasher who isn't even involved in his own daughter's life. But Bill's life changes as he bonds with the team.

Dan Dunne (Ryan Gosling) is a young inner-city junior high school teacher whose ideals wither and die in the face of reality. Day after day in his shabby Brooklyn classroom, he somehow finds the energy to inspire his 13 and 14-year-olds to examine everything from civil rights to the Civil War with a new enthusiasm. Rejecting the standard curriculum in favor of an edgier approach, Dan teaches his students how change works... on both a historical and personal scale...and how to think for themselves. Though Dan is brilliant, dynamic, and in control in the classroom, he spends his time outside school on the edge of consciousness. His disappointments and disillusionment have led to a serious drug habit. He juggles his hangovers and his homework, keeping his lives separated, until one of his troubled students, Drey (Shareeka Epps), catches him getting high after school. From this awkward beginning, Dan and Drey stumble into an unexpected friendship. Despite the differences in their ages and situations, they are both at an important intersection. Depending on which way they turn - and which choices they make - their lives will change.