The story begins with Kiana Roubini being dropped by her stepmother at Greenwich Middle School. Kiana’s stepmother leaves her unregistered to clean the baby’s vomit in the backseat of the car. However, Kiana decides on doing things on her own. Kiana is directed to Room 117 which is comprised of “the unteachables.” All the students in Room 117 exhibited weird behaviors prompting the school superintendent, Dr. Thaddeus, to ostracize them. The class has been assigned to a 55-year-old Zackary Kermit. Mr. Kermit is always moody due to a scandal that ruined his career and marriage 25 years ago. After the scandal, Dr. Thaddeus abhorred Mr. Kermit.
Mr. Kermit has only one year to retire and Dr. Thaddeus plots a plan to punish him. Dr. Thaddeus assigns Mr. Kermit the unteachables class. However, Mr. Kermit decides to ignore the children and spends his time drinking coffee and doing a crossword puzzle. The students start falling in love with Mr. Kermit after he defended one of his students to be included in the school team. To reward him, the students steal and dump vuvuzelas in a river. This action was taken because Mr. Kermit hates vuvuzelas. Dr. Thaddeus suspends the students for one week.
Dr. Thaddeus believes that Mr. Kermit is lazy and incompetent. Therefore, he takes an advantage of a certain rule in the district handbook to interdict Mr. Kermit. The students are supposed to take a science aptitude test. If the students fail, Mr. Kermit would be dismissed. The students do not score well but decide to take part in the science fair to score extra points and save Mr. Kermit’s job. The students improve their performance and Dr. Thaddeus is forced to invalidate Mr. Kermit’s dismissal.
