Welcome Back, Kotter is an American sitcom starring Gabe Kaplan as a high-school teacher in charge of a racially and ethnically diverse remedial education class nicknamed the Sweathogs. Recorded in front of a live studio audience, the series aired on ABC from September 9, 1975, through May 17, 1979. It provided John Travolta with his breakthrough role.

Plot

Stand-up comedian and actor Gabriel "Gabe" Kaplan stars as the main character, Gabe Kotter, a wise-cracking teacher who returns to his alma mater, James Buchanan High School in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, New York City, ten years after graduating to teach a remedial class of loafers known as the Sweathogs. The rigid vice principal, Michael Woodman (John Sylvester White), who was formerly Kotter's social studies teacher, dismisses the Sweathogs as witless hoodlums. Woodman only expects Kotter to contain them until they drop out or are expelled or arrested. Kotter had been a remedial student and a founding member of the original class of Sweathogs. He befriends the current class and stimulates their potential. Kotter forms a rapport with his students. They begin visiting his Bensonhurst apartment, sometimes via the fire escape window, often to the chagrin of his wife Julie (Marcia Strassman).