When a boy called her second-grader a racial slur, Helen Howell turned the hurtful episode into a teaching moment.

"She said, there will be people in this world who won't like you because of the color of your skin, but you still have to respect them," recalled Isabel Howell-Stephens, who was 7 when she was sent home for fighting, while the boy was not.

Howell, a lifelong educator, St. Catherine University professor and staunch advocate for early-childhood development and diverse classrooms, marched to the school and demanded the principal reprimand both students equally. That "day she became my hero," said Isabel, whom Howell adopted as a newborn from Colombia. "That was the moment I knew I could trust my mom and she would always have my back." When a high school math teacher gave her eldest daughter Pilar Howell-Stephens, a math whiz, a B because she missed one test while sick, Howell insisted on a makeup exam even though the term had just ended. "I was like, 'Mom. Can we please, please drop this? I got a B. It is fine.' But she said 'No. You didn't do B work,' " Pilar recalled. She took the exam and earned her A.

At school or at home, Howell expected excellence: proper English, daily dives into the encyclopedia, Black history books and the art projects Howell assigned to be done while she worked. "She was direct and told us her expectations: That we would finish high school at the top of our class and go on to college. There were no if, ands or buts about taking a year off to go find yourself. 'You are not here to make friends. You are here to get your work done,' " Pilar Howell-Stephens recalled her saying often. "She was an educator through and through."

The Golden Valley resident who loved truth and family, Hallmark movies, adventure novels and training gifted educators, died May 30 of heart failure. She was 77.

Howell was born and raised in north Minneapolis. The daughter of a hair-products salesman and a nurse, she attended St. Joseph's Catholic school and high school at the Ursuline nun-operated Villa Maria Academy boarding school in Frontenac, where Howell was the only Black student. Her father died when she was young. Her mother, the only Black nurse in her hospital, taught Howell her mantra: "Never quit."

After receiving an English degree from St. Catherine's in St. Paul in the 1960s, Howell was hired by the U.S. State Department to teach English in Colombia for two years. She later worked in human resources at Control Data Corp. in Bloomington. But her passion was education. She taught early-childhood family education in schools and preschools in Robbinsdale, Plymouth and Eagan. Howell worked two jobs and returned to school to get her master's degree while raising her daughters alone following her 1990 divorce and while caring for her mother, whose brain was damaged during surgery.

Undaunted, Howell hired nursing aids and finished her master's in education at the University of Minnesota. She was hired as assistant professor of education at St. Catherine's. She taught her student teachers that to be excellent they must understand different cultures, same-sex households, conflict resolution, bias and to help kids speak up, develop self-esteem and learn reading and math. Each child learns differently, she told them. Some by sitting still. Others by manipulating objects or moving their bodies. Retired educator and best friend Renee Hunter said Howell believed you had to reach, teach and equip children "in preschool" or it would be too late to reroute them as teens. Through each child she "tried to save the world, every time," Hunter said. Howell is survived by daughters Pilar and Isabel. Services have been held.

Dee DePass • 612-673-7725