The seating chart mattered more than my new lesson plan

One thing K-12 taught me pretty fast: a beautiful lesson plan can fall apart if the room itself is fighting you. I spent too much time early on rewriting activities, changing slides, and looking for the perfect warm-up. Some of that helped, but the bigger change came from something boring. I moved two students who fed off each other, kept the pencil sharpener away from the traffic spot, and…