Firefighting is a well know term when it comes to driver training.
It literally means that if you have misjudged the abilities of your pupil, and you take them to locations that are NOT suitable for their current abilities,
YOU WILL BE FIREFIGHTING for the length of time you are in that location.

Your pupil will be well out of their depth, anxious, may have panic attacks, will possibly inconvenience other road users, may do something very out of character for their usual driving standard, and possibly even be the cause of an accident.

THIS IS WHY YOU MUST KNOW YOUR LOCATIONS INSIDE OUT.

And you must align your lesson structure based on your pupil's abilities and experience.

The Title of Lesson Planning all links together with
GOALS AND NEEDS
LESSON STRUCTURE
PRACTICE AREAS
ADAPTION OF THE LESSON


Therefore, are the roads that you intend taking your pupil on to cover the lesson goal suitable?
Will they challenge your pupil to a level that ensures learning takes place but does not make them feel unsafe or not capable of dealing with them?

As an example of poor route planning let's say you have a learner that can move off and stop at quiet T-junctions.
You have a discussion with them at the beginning of their training session, and they would like to address dealing with roundabouts.

However, they have a tendency to stall a lot at the quite junctions.

How are they possibly going to cope with pulling out onto a fast moving roundabout?
Are you going to put themselves, you and other road users at risk?

YES 100% you are.

You have a responsibility to ensure the the learning location and environment is kept safe.

By allowing your pupil to attempt roundabouts, even quiet ones, you are potentially creating safety critical situations arising.

You need to sort out the issue and get to the route cause of the stalling before progressing on to roundabouts.

Put yourself in the shoes of the learner if you take them to the roundabouts. How are they going to feel when the arrive at the first one, only to then realise they are a little more complex than they thought, and now they are sat at the give way line trying to fit in with other cars?

They will probably end up needing your assistance to achieve this, which can sometimes be hard for an instructor as you don't have a gas pedal.
If your pupil has gone into melt down mode, trying to get them to add gas can be quite difficult.

You have created this situation and are now Firefighting to rescue the situation.
Your pupils confidence is going to be blown, and may have set them back quite a few hours.
In addition, you've now probably set them up to have a harder time when it comes to doing them again in the future once you have sorted the clutch control issue.

THE BEST AND ONLY WAY TO BE ON THE RIGHT ROUTES FOR YOUR PUPIL'S
is to get out on your own and find them!

Know your training areas like you know the back of your hand.

You need to find Nursery routes for the total beginners.
Intermediate routes for those who are gaining confidence so that they can challenge themselves with possibly heavier traffic and slightly faster moving roads.
And then advanced routes for national speed limits, rush hour traffic, etc

Find your routes, know them inside out so that instructions can be given without any mis-information being given.
So that you know what those roads are like at different times of day.

And that you know where if all goes wrong and you made a misjudgement of a pupil you can get off that route rather sharpish, and get back on track to something they can cope with.

Some instructors will have a habit of driving the same routes week in week out.
How on earth this is benefiting your pupils?
Great! They might be able to take their driving test quite quickly because they know all the test routes in your area inside out and back to front. 
But has this actually prepared them for "Real life driving"
If you ask me it's a 100% NO
They will be nowhere near ready to face the task of dealing with everyday roads outside of the areas they have been taken on during their lessons.

It's too late by the time they realise that they are well out of their depth, and usually too embarrassed to ask their former instructor, or any instructor for additional lessons to build up the experience and confidence.

Learners rely on Instructors to supply them a full width and breadth of as many types of roads as they possibly can, in the time that they are with them.

As an Instructor, you're probably quite shocked at the level of some of the driving on our roads lately, and even more so when you jump on a motorway.
How many times do you say to yourself
"why are they sitting in the middle lane?" 
"how much closer do they want to get to the car in front of them?"
" They are well above the speed limit"
"How about slowing down in these weather conditions?"
"Why haven't they got their lights on?"

I EXPECT THESE THOUGHTS ARE JUST THE TIP OF THE ICEBURG.

But in reality, why are we saying these things?

We're saying them because 95% of drivers who use the motorways have NEVER had any formal training on how to use them!

There are possibly drivers who have been driving on the motorways since they opened in 1958 who have never had one lesson to know how to drive them correctly, but truly believe after all the years of driving on them that they know all the rules.
But in truth probably don't know any of them other than what the speed limit is.

It was only in 2018 that learners were allowed to get training on a motorway with a fully qualified Instructor in a car with dual controls, but how many of the 40,000 instructors since that introduction actually take their learners on them?

It's like going for baking lessons for the first time, and being taught how to make cakes.
You're given all the ingredients told how to mix them up, but not given the heat or the time that the mixture should stay in the oven.

It's going to take trial and error to get it right.

That's ok when it comes to baking a cake, but when you're trial and erroring driving at 70mph, it could be fatal!

So having used that analogy, how is a learner who has only been driving around the same roads day in day out going to able to deal with real roads if they haven't been given the experience of different roads?

You'll want to build up your own portfolio of routes that will suit pupils from all the areas that you cover.
It would be detrimental to you and your business as well as to your pupil if you were to take on someone from outside of your normal area for training, and not have a clue about the roads you are taking them on.

If this happens, you'll be back to the whole game of Firefighting the lesson, and will probably demoralise your pupil in the process because you will no doubt end up on roads that may put them out of their capability range.

Whatever areas you intend to use, will require you spending time getting to know all of the roads within that area.