Eye-opening Incident

I was teaching my second block of geometry about perimeter and area of 2D figures. The day before we had found perimeter and area of regular shapes like rectangles and squares and they were doing great. Then I introduced irregular shapes where students had to do multiple steps to find the answer.
Here is an example:

Some of them shut down at this point. I began to explain the way I am used to solving the problem which is separating the shape into shapes that you can take the area of by using a formula. I drew a line making two rectangles (one 5x5 and another 3x2). As soon as I did this one of my students JC* starts to say Ms. Callahan that is way too much work. I just finished off the rectangle and took the area and then subtracted the bottom right square. The other students immediately liked his way of solving the problem much better. From that point on we started solving these problems by finding the entire area and then subtracting if the shape wasn't too difficult.

This was an eye-opening experience for me because I was used to doing it the way I liked however this way may not connect with students. If JC hadn't explained the way he solved the problem I probably would have never said anything. Because I have never taught geometry before I didn't know how to explain how to work a problem in more than one way. The rest of the day I continued to teach both ways of solving this problem and an overwhelming number of students chose JC's way. This incident taught me to be prepared to explain something multiple ways to students and also to ask students how they solved a problem because sometimes they may have found a way that I had never thought of.

*student's names have been changed