Paul Calvert spoke with Jaz Ampaw-Farr, a past contestant on the TV show The Apprentice. She shared about her traumatic past and how she's overcome it to inspire others in life and in education.

We picked them up from Tilbury Docks at 3am in the morning and we had to get rid of them all by 8pm that night.

We went to the flower market in London. We're going to the big markets, we're phoning Battersea Dogs Home, and my biggest mistake was that I took my lucky cats to China Town at 6am in the morning, when China Town isn't open. Just a hint for anyone who is thinking of going there! Also they already get their lucky cats from China at a very cheap price, so it was a really huge mistake, and I have still got them all in my garage.

Paul: What is Alan Sugar like?

Jaz: When I meet someone who I feel is a little bit abrasive, I always say to myself "Jaz, what would you do? What would you think? What would you feel? What would you say if you were able to be compassionate right in this moment?"

Alan Sugar is quite abrasive, because he doesn't say please or thank you, or sorry. He has got one tone and he frowns all the time. It's like he is expecting to be disappointed all the time. But actually, even off set, he is exactly the same. He is very authentic. That's just his range of emotion and he just wants things done. I think he has got this thing that he doesn't suffer fools gladly. The party at the end he was there and he was in the same mode as in the board room. I don't think I ever saw him smile the entire time, but he is a straight up guy. What you see is what you get.

Paul: Teaching is a very difficult profession to be in today and family seems to have broken down so much, is a teacher a glue that holds a child together?

Jaz: For me it's more than glue.

When you have things at home going on, where a break up, even when it's done beautifully, even when it's done with as much compassion and empathy as possible, it's still a disruption of home and of life and acknowledging belonging.

What teachers often don't realise is that they are there every day. Six hours they spend with the children every day and children are like video cameras, they're recording everything you say and do and they are working out, "Is that what she really thinks? Is that what she really feels?" They are looking for data the whole time to see if, this is ok, and am I ok?

Teachers are so much more than glue. They are like an oak tree, or like a light that never goes out, like a lighthouse, that you can be drawn towards and you know that you are safe. You're not going to crash into the rocks. You're not going to drift out to sea because that lighthouse is driving you towards consistency and safety.

I talk about teachers having ace relationships, which is being their authentic selves, and being consistent in the fact that they are always there. Also having high expectations, not letting the fact that things are hard at home, but I still expect you to do well, because I believe in you. Those three things, those ace relationships, they're the reason that I am not dead, they really are.

I have searched my life and gone back and thought "How have I survived? How have I done this?" In all the therapy and counselling and the coaching that I have had, and I have given to other people, I just keep coming back to it's those five teachers and a surrounding cast of accidental saviours. But those five teachers were the glue and thread of life that kept me going all the way.

Paul: What would you say to a young person setting off on their journey of life today?

Jaz: Strap yourself in kid!