Mrs. Humboldt wasn’t my teacher.  She was my brothers, but from what I heard, she sure had an impact.  Mrs. Humboldt is a 6th-grade science teacher. She is old, very chubby and has arthritis, so when she walked it was with a pronounced bowed gait.  She was also short, but at that point, her students were even shorter, so she towered over them as any teacher would over a little 11-12-year-old. My brother was about a year younger than everyone else. He had just turned 11, as his birthday was in August.  Because of that, he was a little smaller than most of his peers, and Mrs. Humboldt seemed even taller. Walking into the classroom, as an impressionable little 6th grader, and seeing an old lady who looked like a grandma as his teacher was reassuring for him, he thought she was nice, but a little odd, as she had a shrine to Brian Urlacher, a former Bears player, now in the hall of fame, in the room.  His hopes of a nice grandmotherly figure were shattered as Mrs. Humboldt began to teach. In sixth grade, natural selection was taught, and Mrs. Humboldt was a firm believer. “Adapt or Die”, was said whenever a student felt a little lost, as they were not used to Middle School yet. That became her catchphrase.

My brother wasn’t the best at following rules.  He got into trouble a lot. I’d say that about 60% of it was his fault, but regardless, he wasn’t a stranger to the principal's office.  Whenever he acted up, Mrs. Humboldt would say that he had to “Adapt or Die”, because he could either get used to the rules of middle school, which would prepare him for highschool or keep on getting in trouble in Middle School and eventually High School.  He ended up getting through middle school, with only a suspension that wasn’t his fault and also graduating high school without too much trouble. Because of her impact, my brother disliked Mrs. Humboldt, and I heard about it all the time.  “She likes scaring little 6th graders” and “She’s obsessed with Brian Urlacher” were repeated throughout the years.  Luckily, neither my sister nor I had her as a teacher.

In the past few months, however, before he left for college, he told us that “Mrs. Humboldt was actually a really great teacher”, and that “She really prepared me for high school”.  My mother, sister and I were dumbfounded, as he had previously only had bad things to say about her. Now, before he left, he was praising her.

As my sister was about to go into middle school, we all had a sense of dread that she would get Mrs. Humboldt as a teacher -- that she would have to see her bowed gait every day, sit in a classroom where “adapt or die” was a catchphrase, and look at a shrine for a retired football player whenever she went to class -- but my brothers words slightly calmed us, and made the prospect of having her as a teacher seem less horrible. Fortunately, she did not get Mrs. Humboldt as a teacher, and won’t have to deal with her catchphrase, the self-doubt, or her shrine every day, even though her words have spread through the school and have become commonplace among the other teachers.