About 50 of the 80 children were killed. Three teachers also lost their lives, and two more still in intensive care.

English teacher Wu Zhonghong, 45, who had taught at Huaiyuan Middle School in the city Chongzhou for 28 years, also gave his life to save others.

Vice-principal Li Hongcheng said the four-story building shook for about one minute before cracking in the middle.

Wu was teaching junior middle school first-graders on the fourth floor, and, according to a student who identified himself as Xiaobin, Wu told the students not to panic and to "take nothing and follow me" as they hurried downstairs.

Suddenly, someone shouted out that two students had been left behind, and Wu ran back up.

"We ran out and the building collapsed. Teacher Wu disappeared," Xiaobin told a reporter.

Rescuers worked throughout the night to find Wu. When they finally found him the next morning, he and four other students had passed away. Most of the 700 students and teachers are safe.

It was a similar story at Yingxiu Elementary School, which was near the epicenter of the quake and lost most of its 70 teachers and 473 students.

Two teachers, Liu Sineng and Ye Shangmin, had been taking a PE lesson at the time of the quake. They and their students survived. When they dug through the debris with their bare hands, they found fellow teacher Zhang Laiya covering two students. The students were alive but Zhang was not. Another teacher, Geng Fang, also died saving two students.

A local radio station broadcast the plight of another school's teacher, Yan Rong.

Tan Qianqiu's wife, Zhang Guanrong, meets her husband after rescuers retrieve his body from the ruins of Dongqi Middle School in Hanwang town, Deyang city, last Tuesday. 

 She stayed behind until 13 students were clear of the school's crumbling building and paid with the price of her life.

Yan's 18-month-old baby daughter, Du Wenxin, might have been orphaned by the quake.

Her father Du Pengxiang, a police officer, was working at the Jiuhuang Airport at the time, and nothing has been heard of him since.

When rescuers on Thursday morning pulled the baby out from the building belonging to the Aba Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture Traffic Police, her grandmother was still trapped.

About three hours after rescue work began, the old lady, who was losing a lot of blood, told a doctor: "I really can't make it."

"Hold on, or your granddaughter will be an orphan," the woman doctor said. But three minutes later, the old lady lowered her head and never looked up again.

Kindergarten teacher Wang Dan worked tirelessly with her colleagues to save 800 children in Dujiangyan.

The children had been asleep when the earthquake struck, and their teachers pulled them up and led them to safety.