Finding the helpers--right in my classroom

Apparently not everyone in my building was aware that we had a medical emergency outside my classroom yesterday. One of my colleagues told me later, "From where I was standing, it sounded like a bunch of giddy girls giggling in the stairwell." They may have sounded like giddy girls, but from where I was standing they looked like heroes.

I've bragged about these four students before. They're the only women in my early-morning first-year writing class, and though they didn't know each other before the semester started, they quickly formed the best kind of supportive community. They sit together and help each other, not in a cheaty way but in a let's-try-to-understand-this way. I often come into the classroom and find them discussing the day's reading or writing assignment, and during in-class activities they consistently push each other to think harder, do better.

Early in the semester they developed the habit of going to breakfast together after my class, which may have played a part in what happened, because they hadn't had breakfast yet and we watched a bit of film in class that made one of the students queasy. She stayed in the room feeling dizzy after class but urged the others to go on without her, but they didn't listen, which is a good thing because if she'd collapsed in an empty classroom, the results could have been tragic.

They all walked together down the stairs and I stayed close behind; they all encouraged their queasy classmate to sit down when she felt dizzy, and when she collapsed and stopped breathing, they all stepped in and did what needed to be done. 

Things happened very quickly: I called out "Who knows CPR?" and one of my heroic students said she's certified, so I set her to work doing chest compressions while I went down the steps to the nearest office to get the administrative assistant to call 911. Colleagues stepped in to block off access to the stairs, and a prof who knows the student's parents gave them a call. Meanwhile, up on the stairwell, I watched my student's lips turning blue while her classmate thumped on her chest and her other classmates cocooned her and kept her from falling further down the steps. I've never felt more helpless, but I've also never felt more surrounded by helpers.

The sick student soon revived and the EMS techs arrived and took over, but even then my heroic students kept helping: they held her up, helped her out of her coat, gathered her phone and shoes and backpack, and then one of them went to the hospital in the ambulance so her sick classmate wouldn't be alone. Soon the stairwell was empty and everything went back to normal, except what could possibly be normal after a student stops breathing? 

She's fine now, back on campus and a little embarrassed by all the fuss, and I'm looking forward to seeing her back in the classroom early Monday morning, upright and breathing and not turning blue. She'll be surrounded by her supportive classmates, talking and laughing and maybe sounding a little giddy, but from this point on I'll never see them as anything other than heroes.