PS 177 Chapter Leader Shernice Blackman was leaving her Fresh Meadows school on Dec. 20, an ordinary Friday afternoon, when she saw colleagues running toward a smoke-filled school bus that had just pulled over to the curb across the street. Those who got there first were helping crying children as they stumbled from the bus to safety. “We all transitioned immediately to emergency mode,” Blackman explained. The PS 177 staff calmed down the frightened children — students from neighboring MS 216 on their way home — and got them out of the cold and into the school building as the fire trucks and ambulances arrived. School administrators accompanied seven children in the ambulance to the hospital while EMTs checked the remaining 15 or so children, administering oxygen to some, to make sure everyone was all right. Blackman said the MS 216 students quickly became “just kids joking around” as they waited for parents to pick them up. All the children taken to the hospital were released later that day. PS 177 teachers stayed at the school until the last child was picked up after 7 p.m. It’s all in a day’s work for New York City public school teachers.