Even when she was a very young girl, Shannon Wright knew she wanted to be a teacher, regularly forcing her younger brother to play her student while she drilled him on spelling words and math problems.

By the time her funeral was held today, nearly everyone in America seemed to know the story of Wright -- how she was fatally shot Tuesday while shielding a student from the spray of gunfire coming from two young boys at her school. Wright, 32, was lauded as a devoted wife and mother, a passionate teacher, and a heroine who apparently gave no thought to saving her own life in those horrific moments outside Westside Middle School -- her own alma mater. Another teacher, Lynette Thetford, was wounded.

"The word hero' has been used a lot since everything happened," the Rev. Gary Cremeens told the crowd of several hundred mourners at Bono Church of Christ. "If you're looking for a definition of a hero, you need look no further than Shannon or Lynette. There are people who are alive today because of them."

The sad round of funerals ended today in this city of 50,000 in northeastern Arkansas, as residents paid their respects to the victims of Tuesday's shooting spree. First this morning, groups of mourners filed tearfully past the open casket of Stephanie Johnson, 12; nearby, a bulletin board featured photographs of a smiling Stephanie from infancy to the present. Later, Britthney Varner, 11, was remembered as a good student and friend, with classmates from her sixth-grade class serving as honorary pallbearers. On Friday, services were held for Paige Ann Herring, 12, and Natalie Brooks, 11.

Nine other students were wounded during the shooting spree, which began after classes had filed outdoors in response to a false fire alarm. Two of Wright's former students, Andrew Golden, 11, and Mitchell Johnson, 13, have been charged with five counts each of murder and 10 counts of battery in a baffling episode that may label them as the youngest mass murderers in U.S. history.

Student Emma Pittman, 12, told reporters earlier this week that she was convinced she, too, would have died if not for Wright's intervention. "I think she seen that bullet coming, grabbed me by the shoulders, and pushed me out of the way," said Emma, who was not wounded. Wright died Tuesday night after surgery at St. Bernards Regional Medical Center.

Today, in his weekly radio address, President Clinton urged Americans to search for reasons for the boys' alleged actions. "We do not understand what drives children, whether in small towns or big cities, to pick up guns and take the lives of others. We may never make sense of the senseless, but we have to try," Clinton said in the message taped in Cape Town, South Africa, the latest stop on his 11-day African tour.

Clinton noted that the shooting was the third of its kind in recent months, even though "we've worked hard to make our schools places of learning, not fear -- places where children can worry about math and science, not guns, drugs and gangs. But when a terrible tragedy like this occurs, it reminds us there is work yet to be done."

In December, a student fired on a prayer circle at a high school in West Paducah, Ky., killing three schoolmates and wounding five. Two months earlier, two teenage girls were fatally shot in Pearl, Miss., when a student burst into a high-school common area, firing a gun, after killing his mother at home.

Here in Jonesboro, a friendly city where there are normally no more than three or four homicides a year, the tragedy has shaken the community to its core. On Tuesday, one week after the episode, city leaders are planning a service "of hope and healing" at the Convocation Center of Arkansas State University.

But today at noon, the community paused to focus on the memory of sixth-grade teacher Wright, the mother of 2-year-old Zane and a firm disciplinarian in the classroom who also tried to make learning fun for her students.

"The kids loved her," said fellow teacher Barry Jones, who has known Wright since kindergarten. "The kids were talking the other day about how much fun they had in her class, how she was not just a teacher who read things out of a book. She made interesting activities for them. She told a lot of jokes, and when she got on them about something, she was never mean."

Jones, who was a pallbearer at Wright's funeral, recalled the last time he saw her Tuesday morning, shortly before the shooting began, and Westside Middle School changed forever.

"My classroom is just down the hall from hers, and we were standing in the doorway between bells," he said. "She was not real tall, and the kids were all around her, and she looked at me and laughed, I kind of get mixed up in all these kids.' Then I left to go to the high school, and that was it."

At her services today, the Rev. Benny Baker deliberately tried to inject some of Wright's humor into his message. Addressing her brother, Todd Williams, he asked, "Now when you were locked in that room as her student, was there ever any discipline involved?" Williams said no. "Oh, I see, she did all the talking," Baker replied. "You were quiet.

He also recalled that the features he remembered most about Wright were her beautiful hair and eyes. He said he mentioned those to Wright's husband, Mitchell, in the days since her death and that Mitchell agreed, saying, "That hair. That's the reason we were always late."

Baker turned serious again, however, when he sent out a challenge to the students and teachers of Westside Middle School, urging them to return to school with the gusto Wright would have approved of.

"Go to school Monday," he said. "Go to school Monday and do your job right." CAPTION: A woman carries a photo of slain Westside Middle School teacher Shannon Wright and family that was placed on her coffin during graveside service at Jonesboro, Ark., cemetery.