They used their own bodies to protect the children.

Courtesy of the Telegraph:

The centre of the destruction was Moore, a suburb of 55,000 to the south of the city. 

There, the Plaza Towers primary school was directly hit by the tornado, and 24 children are feared to have died inside. At least seven bodies have been pulled from the rubble of the school and authorities have confirmed that more casualties are expected. 

One witness at Plaza Towers told KOCO television: "We pulled a teacher out and she was on top of three kids. The kids were fine but the teacher was in a bad way and we wheeled her into an ambulance. As far as I know most of the kids got out. 

"There were kids running around screaming. The school is just gone, you can't tell what was the front and what was the back. People were screaming for their children." Another rescuer said: "They've been pulling out third graders. It is absolute chaos down here. It's horrific." 

One teacher described lying on top of six children in a bathroom to protect them. 

The children pulled from the rubble were passed down a human chain to a triage centre in the car park of the school, which taught 500 pupils. 

Many of the children had been taken to a local church to shelter before the storm hit. Around 75 were believed to have been kept at the school by teachers as they sought to ride out the tornado.

 A second school in the storm's path, Briarwood Elementary, was also flattened.

A teacher hugs one of the students from Briarwood Elementary School.

I can barely imagine how terrifying it must have been for these children, and the teachers left behind to protect them. But story after story is emerging of these educators literally shielding the bodies of their students with their own.

I think the next person I hear say a derogatory remark about a teacher I will punch in the mouth.

The devastation that you can see in the pictures is bad enough but take a look at the video one family captured as they emerged from where they took shelter from the storm.

When they entered that space they were surrounded by the walls of a house, and when they emerge there is nothing but sky above them.

I don't necessarily think that this is the right time to get political, but I cannot let this go without mentioning that both of Oklahoma's Senators voted against providing relief to New Jersey after Sandy.

Somehow I imagine they will have changed their tune about government spending. Don't you?

Update: More unbelievable video.

By the way for those wondering how come these people did not have time to get all of the children to safety you should know that there was ONLY a sixteen minute warning, and that the schools are some of the best constructed buildings in the area. Literally the ONLY way to have been completely safe was to go underground, and from what I am hearing the bedrock under this town makes that very difficult.