To Sir, with Love is a British drama film that deals with social and racial issues in a secondary school in the East End of London. Braithwaite 's autobiographical novel of the same name. The film's title song " To Sir with Love ", sung by Lulu, peaked at the top of the Billboard Hot chart for five weeks in the autumn of and ultimately was the best-selling single in the US that year; meanwhile, Poitier, playing a charismatic schoolteacher to troubled youth, was the first black actor to win a Golden Globe Award.
The film premiered and became a hit one month before another film about troubled schools, Up the Down Staircase , appeared. Mark Thackeray, an immigrant to Britain from British Guiana , has been unable to obtain an engineering position despite an month job search. He accepts a teaching post for Class 12 at North Quay Secondary School in the East End of London , as an interim position, despite having no teaching experience.
The pupils there have been rejected from other schools, and Thackeray is a replacement for a teacher who recently died. The pupils, led by Bert Denham and Pamela Dare, behave badly: their antics range from vandalism to distasteful pranks. Thackeray retains a calm demeanour but loses his temper after discovering something being burned in the classroom stove, which turns out to be a girl's sanitary towel.
He orders the boys out of the classroom, then reprimands all the girls, either for being responsible or passively observing, for what he says is their "slutty behaviour". Thackeray is angry with himself for allowing his pupils to incense him. Changing his approach, he informs the class that they will no longer study from textbooks.
Until the end of term, he will treat them as adults and expects them to behave as such. He declares that they will address him as "Sir" or "Mr. Thackeray"; the girls will be addressed as "Miss" and boys by their surnames. They are also allowed to discuss any issue they wish.
