Teachers were heroic protectors

Yamiche Alcindor and Elizabeth Weise | USA TODAY

There are multiple stories coming out of Moore, Okla., of teachers putting their own lives on the line to protect their students, just as teachers in Newtown and other schools risked and sometimes lost their lives for students.

During the worst of the tornado that destroyed Moore, teachers shielded children with their own bodies even as roofs collapsed around them, according to educators and parents of children who survived.

David Wheeler's son Gabriel, 8, is in third grade at Briarwood Elementary School in Moore, one of two schools destroyed. Students were initially told to huddle in the hallways, but Gabriel's teacher, Julie Simon, said it wasn't safe and ushered them to a closet.

Simon shielded Gabriel with her arms and held him down as the building's roof collapsed, Wheeler said. The tornado's force was so strong it sucked the glasses off the faces of some students. Gabriel suffered cuts and bruises and had gravel embedded in his head — but was otherwise unscathed, his father said.

Cindy Lowe is a first-grade teacher at Briarwood. In an interview with ABC Tuesday, she said the school routinely practices tornado drills. When she saw the tornado coming, she realized how serious the situation was. She had her students gather in the middle of the room, and she laid her body on top of as many of them as she could to protect them from flying debris.

After the storm had passed, many parents had difficulty getting to school to pick up their children because of damage to the roads and their vehicles. Lowe said she stayed with one student until 8 p.m. when his parents were able to get to the school.

Safety is a "big issue" in schools and is covered in several education classes, said Gregg Garn, dean of the Jeannine Rainbolt College of Education at the University of Oklahoma in Norman. His university has been sending student teachers to the Moore School District for years, and 283 of his graduates work there.

The safety training is reinforced when students graduate and go on to work in school districts where they get instruction in specific guidelines for disaster preparation depending on the potential types of disaster in the area.

Training only reinforces who teachers are to begin with, Garn said: "There's just a special person who thinks about becoming a teacher." They begin from "that place of caring" and some go on to find themselves in situations where they literally shield their students "at the expense of their own safety," he said.

That was clear during the Newtown, Conn., shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary, where school officials and teachers died protecting students from gunman Adam Lanza, 20. Lanza entered the school for an attack that killed 20 children and six adults and wounded others. He killed himself at the school and shot his mother to death earlier in their home.

Dawn Hochsprung, the school's principal, was killed while lunging at Lanza as she tried to overtake him. Others did their best to shield students from the impending danger.

As the shooter made his way through the elementary school building, teachers — some who reportedly died with their bodies over their students — physically came to the aid of terrified students.

Teacher Victoria Soto was slain along with several of her students whom she had tried to hide in a classroom closet. She, according to various reports, told the gunman that her class had gone to the auditorium/cafeteria, then some students tried to flee. Lanza shot them, Soto and another teacher who was in the room.

Teacher Kaitlin Roig piled 16 first-graders on top of one another in the bathroom. Others locked doors, bunched students together and tried to hide in any places they could before police arrived.

Andrea Hartsough's daughter is in elementary school in San Francisco. She realized as she heard the stories from Oklahoma city last night that "I expected nothing less." When she pondered her own expectation, she realized she didn't mean it to belittle the teachers' courage, the criminal defense lawyer said.

"These are people who do some of the hardest work, and the most important work, in our society. They do it in the face of abuse and lack of recognition of their status as professionals. They're 'just a teacher.' And yet they're the people who stand up and put themselves in harm's way. Not because they're well-paid or well-trained, but because that's who they are."

Teachers aren't generally trained for such crises, but they don't bat an eye when called upon to care for their charges, said Michele Godwin, a former high school English teacher.

"Our school had to go on lockdown a few times in the seven years I worked there," she said, "and it never occurred to any of my fellow teachers or me that we should do anything other than protect our students."

Rizwan Hussain "was brought up in the Muslim culture where teaching is considered one of the most revered professions, comparable to practicing medicine."

Hussain works in a financial software start-up in Silicon Valley and has a son in preschool and one in elementary school. For most people, the notion of taking care of a child in danger is natural, he said, but teachers are even more inclined to protect.

"The stories I have heard are far beyond what could be reasonably expected, but they only demonstrate why this profession should be held in such high regard," he said.

It's not just when bullets or bricks are flying that teachers protect their students, Sharnetta Tyler said. Teachers and staff routinely put their students' needs over their own, said the 26-year-old guidance counselor at an elementary school in the Prince George's County Public Schools in Maryland.

Sometimes it is as simple as being there for students when no one else is. "We had a spring concert this week, and we set up the cafeteria for 250 parents. But only 12 showed," Tyler said. Despite having already worked a 10-hour day and being bone tired, she stayed to listen. The 35 students who played need to know that "somebody actually cares about them."

Contributing: Associated Press