When I was a student teacher at an elementary school in Livonia, Michigan, I saw some things that shocked me. Once I watched a male teacher grabbing a disruptive fourth-grader by the neck and forcing his head toward the floor, while pouring out a stream of sarcastic abuse upon him.
The scariest thing, though, was that after a few practice lessons I started to understand how that teacher felt — assuming he shared my gut-clenching terror of losing control of the class. (Probably not a valid assumption; he rather enjoyed bullying the kids.)
This dilemma and others test a well-meaning first-year teacher in Mipo Oh's "Kimi wa Iiko" ("Being Good"), the worthy, more populist follow-up to her dark, award-showered drama "Soko Nomi Nite Hikari Kagayaku" ("The Light Shines Only There"), released in 2014.