HARTFORD, Conn. -- Two Hartford teachers -- both who have backgrounds as emergency medical technicians -- saved a student's life this week.

"Monday morning, before I got here, was a cool, regular guy day," said Ray Yackel, a science teacher at Weaver High School.

That changed when a student passed out in Yackel's classroom.

"Monday night was," Yackel paused, "thoughtful."

Yackel said the student passed out and her heart stopped beating.

"The young lady came up, walked over, her eyes rolled back in her head, her knees collapsed, she fell and hit her head on the side of these soapstone tables," Yackel said. "It was bone to desk."

The teacher supported the student's head and noticed that her heart stopped beating.

"I checked her airway and began doing CPR," he said. "Never have I come across a young person who had lost all of her pulses and was so in dire need of assistance at that time."

That's when colleague Mike Suppicich came in.

"I walked in the door and he was doing compressions," Suppicich said. "I immediately spun around, I ran back to my room -- I teach an EMT class here -- and grabbed a bag-valve mask."

The teachers knew that every second mattered.

"Doing things in a timely manner is important when somebody is not breathing," Suppicich said. "Seventeen years old is a little bit too young to lose your life."

The student was transported to an area hospital and she is expected to be OK. She will return to class on Monday.

The next day, talking with the students, Yackel recalled, "I was a little teary, I suppose, when I mentioned to them about how close I believed she was to being in real serious trouble."

"Almost immediately after they left, I came back to Ray and we gave each other a high five," Suppicich said. "We were a little bit elated over the fact that we felt that we made a difference."