Middle school students in Mississippi acted quickly to halt their school bus from crashing after their driver passed out while on a highway, prompting the operator to declare: “They saved my life.”

The bus in question had just left the Hancock middle school in the Mississippi community of Kiln on Wednesday when the driver, Leah Taylor, suffered an asthma attack and lost consciousness.

Students on the bus leapt into action, with sixth-grader Jackson Casnave, 12, grabbing the wheel after noticing the bus had started to swerve. “I didn’t have time to process my emotions,” Casnave told the Associated Press. “I just wanted to make sure that nobody got hurt.”

Another sixth-grader, Darrius Clark, attempted to help by stepping on the brakes as the bus gained speed. “And then, so she passed out again and then the bus started rolling forward, and I mean it started gaining speed so I didn’t know it had air brakes – so when I clicked the brakes it about threw me out the windshield,” Clark said.

The two students managed to slow the bus and maneuver it into the median and park it. Clark’s sister, 13-year-old Kayleigh, called 911 and said she could barely hear the operator as so many students were screaming. “I was scared,” she recalled. “But also I had to help.”

Yet another student, 15-year-old Destiny Cornelius, attempted to help and found that Taylor was holding a nebulizer. Cornelius used it on the driver. McKenzy Finch, 13, held Taylor’s head and picked up Taylor’s ringing phone to tell the school district what had happened.

Emergency responders soon arrived and assisted Taylor, who said she has now recovered from the emergency. The students were recognized for their actions at a school pep rally on Friday.

“I’m very proud of them,” Taylor said. “I couldn’t ask for any of my other students than my students on my bus. I love every single one of them.

“I’m gonna think of how they saved my life.”

The Associated Press contributed reporting