History teacher Cara Walton lived in Germany from 1980 to 1983. It was there that she attended army schools for her second and third grade years. However, in 1983 her family moved to Augusta County where she attended North River Elementary School.

The move was a big change for Walton and she didn’t fit in in fourth grade. The kids called her “nazi” and said that she was “Hitler’s granddaughter”.

“There was a kid in my class who ironically is my friend now, but wrote a story about terrorists attacking the school and killing people and had me killed in the story and read it out loud to the class. The teacher did nothing to stop him, correct him about any of this,” Walton said.

However, the bullying wasn’t just coming from the kids, it was also coming from the teacher.

“I was a little messy, and so my teacher in that class one day, tells me to get out of my desk, picks up my desk, and dumps the contents of my desk on the floor and tells me to clean it up. I was just mortified because I was fairly quiet, I was not big and loud and outgoing like I am now. I didn’t feel like I could go to my teacher about being picked on by the other kids because my teacher was doing it as well so I was just miserable in fourth and fifth grade,” Walton said.

Walton didn’t tell her parents about what was going on with her teacher.

“I was too embarrassed, I didn’t want to talk to my mom about it because my mom had enough other stuff to worry about. I mean we had just moved back, I have two older brothers, and my oldest brother was perfect. He was super smart, he always did everything, so I was embarrassed, I didn’t want to tell my mom what was going on at school,” Walton said.

Sixth grade turned out to be better for Walton because it was a different school with different students and she was doing well academically which caused her to feel better about herself and have more confidence.

In seventh grade Walton was having trouble with her handwriting and she was pulled out of her math class to work on it. However, since she was missing out on math she started failing the class. In her school there were teams in which students were placed based on their academic abilities. Walton was moved from a high achieving team to a low achieving team.

“My mom comes in and talks to the guidance counselor and asks what’s going on and he says ‘Oh Cara [Walton] can’t do honors classes, she’s not smart enough to do these types of classes, she can’t do this work,’. The guidance counselor told my mother that I was not doing well because my mom had gone back to work and was being a neglecting parent. So I just had a very negative school experience probably through elementary, middle, and probably into my junior year of highschool,” Walton said.
It changed for Walton around her junior year of high school because she got more involved in extracurricular activities like choir and drama. Having success in those areas gave her a lot more confidence which enabled her to be who she truly was and become more assertive.

Even though Walton’s school experience wasn’t the greatest, it is what motivated her to become a teacher, because she wanted to make the experience better for others. The hardships that she encountered while in school have helped her to relate to her students more and allows her to have empathy for her students.

“I think people have this idea that there’s this definite ‘us vs. them’ mentality between students and teachers. I think so many students feel like teachers are out to get them and all that kind of stuff, and I feel like I’ve been in that little place, I’ve been in the point where I feel like the teachers don’t like me and so on, so I feel like it gives me empathy, a better a perspective on what students feel like when they’re at school sometimes,” Walton said.

Walton wishes she could have gone back and gotten help from someone.

“If I had things to do over again, I would have gone and talked to the teacher at the school, I would have gone and talked to the principal at the school, and talked to my mom about it. I told my mom about it years later and she told me, ‘I really wish you would have told me about that, I could’ve gone in and talked to somebody and done something about it, but you didn’t tell me so I didn’t know’,” Walton said.

Walton thinks the best way to prevent bullying is for students to learn to not be afraid to tell someone about what is going on and to lose the mentality of snitching.

“If you don’t speak up for yourself a lot of times people may not know what’s going on and if you don’t speak up and ask for help people don’t always know you need that help,” Walton said.

Walton never spoke to her fourth grade teacher again but, she did go back and talk to her middle school teachers who told her she would never be successful and let them know that she was. She graduated from college with honors twice, and now takes pride in her confidence.

“Things feel good when somebody tells you you can’t do something, sometimes that motivates you all the more to do it and prove them wrong,” Walton said.