Describe a teacher who influenced you: cue card and sample answer

The teacher who had the biggest influence on me was Mr Ahmed, who taught me history when I was about fourteen.

Before his class, I thought history was just about memorising dates and names, and to be honest, I found it pretty dull. But Mr Ahmed had a completely different approach. He'd start each lesson with a question, like 'Why do empires collapse?', and then we'd look at real letters, photographs and newspaper articles from the time to try to answer it ourselves.

He was also incredibly patient. I was quite a shy student and rarely spoke in class, but he found ways to encourage me without putting me on the spot. For instance, he'd ask me to read out part of a document, and then gradually he started asking for my opinion. By the end of the year, I was actually volunteering answers, which surprised my parents.

The biggest influence he had on me was teaching me to question what I read. He always used to say that every source has a point of view, and that we should ask who wrote something and why. That's a habit I've kept, and it's been useful far beyond history, especially now with so much misleading information online. He's also partly the reason I became more confident about speaking in public. I actually sent him an email a few years ago to thank him, and he replied the very same day.