We had our second big thunderstorm of the season last night. I sat on my upper porch watching the light crack the sky. I missed these storms when I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, where the storms blew up some wind but rarely produced any light shows or sound effects. When they did, the sound was a like a kitten pretending to be a lion. Considering my daughter was born and lived the first two years of her life with those anemic storms, I was surprised at how not surprised she was at these great southern storms. But I should have known. Like her mother, she likes big tastes. I like dark chocolate, dark green pesto loaded with garlic, Guinness, California cabernets so deep and rich that they are practically meals in themselves. At four years old, my daughter loves olives, pickles, and anything sour. And she likes the storms. I hope she always will.

But the storms can be scary -- even for me. The previous storm offered a tornado, just as I was sitting in a room at school with one other teacher and ten film club students. We were watching a movie, and no one else was around. We heard the tornado warning via cell phone, and the lights went out, the screen dark. Everyone's impulse was to head for home. My colleague J. and I looked at each other as we grabbed our cell phones -- both of our children were home without us. The students (mostly seniors) wanted to drive home to their parents. J. told everyone to stay put. I didn't get an answer from the home phone, but then I reassured myself that my mom was an Alaskan wilderness woman who had beat cancer, so she could handle whatever happened. I took a deep breath.

The students scattered about the room, looking out a window here, standing at the door there, just pacing there. Even though some were bigger than me, I had a flash of all them as children --someone's children -- and I felt that mother protective feeling come up. I remembered one of my students teasing me after class, "You are so mothering us, Dr. Hudock." But I couldn't help it. They needed the mothering.

Rummaging through the refrigerator, one student found a box of popsicles. Calling to the rest of the students, we lured them into the most protected alcove in the room with treats. And we waited, listening to the hail, horizontal rain, and battering winds. I knew I was responsible for these nearly grown children in a way I never felt responsible for the college students I led, even on a trip to Baltimore. They might have said that they didn't want to be told what to do, but for that minute, they were glad to have two leaders who kept them safe by doing just that. Although they experienced conflicting emotions--to listen and not to listen, they needed that. I found a fundamental difference between high school students and college students, a difference that the first semester of college can make--psychological dependence (looking to someone more powerful) changes to more psychological independence (looking to the self). The leaving home, the breaking of family ties, and the learning to survive in a new environment makes these teenagers into young adults. These students, on the edge of going, still yearned for the comfort of home.

The tornado touched down elsewhere, thank goodness, as I was to find out later. The storm let up, and we watched the rest of the movie, in relief. The students went on home, as we did. But I learned an important lesson for my new job -- that my experience as a mother matters much more for my career as a high school teacher than it ever did when I was a college professor.