Isn't the occupation of the pilot, ummm, pilot?
The pilots who crash these small planes are not usually commercial pilots. According to squisition, this pilot was a flight instructor who was working towards his commercial license. That makes the accident look worse than Harrison Ford's mishaps.
Maybe I'm abnormal but I don't feel more sympathy towards elementary teachers than others. I clicked out of curiosity about the relevance of the occupation to this incident. Consider the roofing or logging occupations. Probably nearly all men. Those occupations will be mentioned if it relates to the accident but I've never seen them mentioned when it has nothing to do with the accident. And they seem like occupations more deserving of sympathy. They are already working in the most dangerous, physically demanding fields so to then be killed in an unrelated incident seems particularly unfortunate.
I understand the point you and others are making about elementary teachers, their impact on children, and the emotion that evokes in some readers. I guess I think that if there is going to be a ranked hierarchy, the loggers and roofers should be placed higher.