Milton Reed, former San Francisco Fireman, starts a new job teaching English in the Haight Ashbury District’s ghetto High School. Recently divorced and the father of two children, he challenges both students and his fellow teachers to honor free speech and academic freedom. Surrounded by drugs and revolution, Milton helps start a student underground newspaper that causes turmoil in the school and death to one of his students by the end of the semester as Milton struggles to juggle freedom and responsibility while falling in love with one of his fellow teachers at the school. R-E-S-P-E-C-T is an upbeat love story, humorous and wise, that pulses with the rhythms, language, and ideals of the violently changing times.