Film Screening: Mr. Advocate by Stacie McClam

Nathan Edwards arrives at Emmanuel K-8 before sunrise, a new teacher, 52 and Black, fresh from decades in corporate America and still learning to live without his wife Gigi, whose photo he keeps in his desk drawer. He built the AI Show himself: six hands-on stations introducing his third graders to artificial intelligence for the first time. No science program existed in the building before he arrived.

Principal Harris, quietly unraveling through a divorce, decides the show doesn't belong three weeks before standardized testing. He routes the cancellation through Taylor, the veteran security guard, whose long-overdue promotion is quietly held over his head. When the fathers at Donuts with Dads learn the show was pulled, they push back, and the boys alert Nathan, just as district superintendent Dr. Roberts arrives on campus.

What begins as an institutional standoff gives way to something more honest: two men falling apart in the same year, learning that grief isn't weakness and that Black men carry more than they're taught to name. The AI Show goes on. A seventh grader tells Nathan what he built is visionary, but basic compared to the AI woven into the daily curriculum at his private school. The question lingers: will a system this resistant to change ever truly embrace what's next?

This screening is a part of MoADSF's NEXUS Black Art Week in collaboration with the African American Art and Culture Complex.

Info: Doors to the theatre are open, audience members can begin taking their seats.

Info: At an urban elementary school obsessed with test prep, new teacher Nathan Edwards shakes things up, bending the rules, bringing back afternoon recess, and launching a creative AI Show for his students.

When the rules-focused principal tries to shut it down, students and parents step in, and the conflict catches the eye of the superintendent. In the end, shared loss and honest conversation help both educators rethink what school should really be about.

Event venue & nearby stays

African American Art & Culture Complex, 762 Fulton Street, San Francisco, United States

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