COBB COUNTY, Ga. — For some students who participated in last week's National Walkout Day, actually walking out was not an easy task.
"I was so nervous, I was shaking," Walton High School student Emma recalled.
The Freshman at the school told 11Alive's Natisha Lance she had never done anything like it before.
"When I got up and I could see everyone staring at me, that was really scary," Emma said.
After the shooting at a Parkland, Florida high school, Emma told 11Alive she felt like she had to do something to bring change as one of the more than 250 students who walked out of Walton High School in Cobb County March 14.
"It was so nice to be surrounded by so many people who felt the same as I do," Emma said.
But when the student returned to her Spanish class, she said that feeling of joy quickly deflated when she was denied taking a pop quiz.
When she asked her teacher why she couldn't take the quiz, she said she was told: "You just have to take the zero."
Now, Emma and her parents believe she's being unfairly targeted.
"The reality is, we need ot come up with something," said Emma's mom, a native of Newtown, Connecticut where the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting happened in 2012. "These are our children and to be outraged over a walkout, instead of outraged over body bags of kids? I can't comprehend that. Doesn't make sense."
So far, Walton has not told students how they will be punished for the walkout. In a statement, Cobb County said they will not discuss specifics about discipline.
“Schools are in the process of administering appropriate consequences to students who violated the Student Code of Conduct," the statement read. "As is always the case, the District cannot discuss specifics of student discipline matters. The statement provided is the full extent of our response.”
However, despite the consequences, Emma told 11Alive she would do it all over again, and plans to participate in the March for Our Lives protest this weekend.
#MarchForOurLives | What you need to know
"This was way bigger than that," she concluded. "It didn't stop me. It wouldn't stop me."
