Getting past a plateau in development as a history teacher

This issue's problem: Nancy Astor seems to have reached a plateau in her development as a history teacher.

After a difficult start to her training year, Nancy seemed to be making rapid progress, but her development has now slowed and her mentor is concerned that she may not achieve her full potential in the final few weeks. Nancy had spent most of the previous year teaching English as a foreign language in Japan, and initially assumed that she would find the transition to history teaching relatively straightforward. Unfortunately, while she did indeed have a good repertoire of engaging exercises, many of which could be adapted to the history classroom, she had not recognised the importance of the relationships that she had built with students over time and was unprepared for the challenges of starting again with entirely new students. She was also taken aback, at first, by...