LaKisha Bolton: a jaguar journey
With dances after every home football game and numerous clubs, LaKisha Bolton thrived during her time at Cedar Shoals. After graduating in 1995, she attended Georgia Southern University and taught in a few schools around Georgia, but she always intended on returning to the East side.
“I had perfect attendance in school because I never wanted to miss. It was a great social experience,” Bolton said. “It was always my intention to come back home. I felt like I needed to give back to the community that gave so much to me.”
Returning to Cedar as a social studies teacher in 2011, Bolton found her connections to the East side helpful when relating to students.
“I was a good student at Cedar so I have high expectations of students. I grew up in the same neighborhoods that these kids grew up in and I was able to accomplish a lot. So that molded me to push my students to not accept mediocrity,” Bolton said.
During her time as a student at Cedar, Bolton felt kids had more opportunities to engage in the community through a variety of clubs like a large student government and marching band.
“It was very rare to have students that weren’t involved in anything when I went to Cedar. Where now there’s a lot of kids that just go to school and go home. People were a little bit more prideful in being a part of something,” Bolton said.
As well as student involvement, Bolton also hopes to see school spirit at Cedar increase.
“It’s (Cedar’s) perception in the community is pretty much the same. Unfortunately, Cedar has always had the number two stigma of the high schools,” Bolton said. “Kids were a little bit more prideful in what it means to be a Jaguar. I just don’t see that as much now, and I wish it was still there.”
Though she enjoyed her time teaching at Cedar and remains a part of the community as a parent of two Cedar students, last year, Boltonbegan working at Coile Middle School. Having worked with special education students at Cedar, she found the transition to being a behavior specialist at Coile easy.
“I always gravitated to the students that might have some behavior challenges. I would come up with strategies with their parents and the kids to see different ways of responding to things,” Bolton said.
As an active community member, Bolton volunteers through the graduate chapter of her sorority, Delta Sigma Theta. She credits this work for making her more socially aware.
“It taught me how to take a stand on things that I feel like are socially unjust, because we’re big on social action. A lot of times you’ll see my chapter at Cedar Shoals registering students to vote,” Bolton said.
Bolton remains grateful for her childhood experiences growing up on the East side.
“I’m always proud of where I’m from. I’m happy about watching this town change, and I never felt bad about growing up on the East side,” Bolton said.
