Dangerous Minds is a 1995 American drama film directed by John N. Smith and produced by Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer. It is based on the autobiography My Posse Don't Do Homework by retired U.S. Marine Louanne Johnson, who in 1989 took up a teaching position at Carlmont High School in Belmont, California, where most of her students were African-American and Latino teenagers from East Palo Alto, a poverty-stricken, racially segregated, and economically deprived city.