IELTS Speaking Part 2: Describe a Teacher Who Influenced You

I'd like to talk about a history teacher I had during my final two years of secondary school, Mr Reeves. History had been my least favourite subject up to that point — or rather, the way it had been taught had made it feel like an exercise in memorising names and dates rather than an exploration of how the world became what it is. Mr Reeves's approach was entirely different. He taught history as a series of contested arguments rather than established facts. We weren't told what happened — we were given primary sources and asked to figure out what probably happened, and why interpretations differed. I remember him once presenting three contradictory accounts of the same event and asking us to identify the political interests each writer might have had. It was the first time a classroom had felt genuinely intellectual. What impressed me most was that he treated disagreement as valuable. In most lessons, contradicting the teacher carried some social risk. In his class, challenging an interpretation — his or anyone else's — was the expected mode of engagement. He had a particular phrase he used when someone made an interesting point: "That changes things, doesn't it?" I heard him say it with equal enthusiasm whether the insight came from the strongest student in the class or the most reluctant one. His influence on me was lasting and probably not limited to history. He taught me to read sources critically, to treat strong assertions with proportionate scepticism, and to find the questions behind the answers. I think about his approach fairly often in my professional life.