These educators didn’t went beyond reading and arithmetic, and gave their pupils real-life lessons of selfless bravery, The Week reports. To grateful parents and kids, the best, most compassionate teachers are heroes every day. But a few extraordinary ones become heroes in the literal sense. Whether saving a drowning student from an icy river or tackling a deranged gunman on the prowl, these eight teachers from around the globe exhibited “humble heroism [1]” in the face of extraordinary danger: 1. Braving icy waters. Last week a 10-year-old autistic boy ran away from his teacher and onto an icy pond behind a Rochester, N.H., school. As the teacher and the principal, Gwen Rhodes, chased after him, the boy fell through the thin ice. Rhodes sprang into action, diving in and hauling the child to safety. It was a “shinning example” of the kind of “heart” educators have, says Julie Ryan Evans at The Stir. Rhodes said it was all in a day’s work: “What we do every day is what makes people who work in school heroes.”