Master P and Get Schooled Celebrate Success at East High
Click the above photo to see more images from the Get Schooled celebration at East High School.
The whole point of the Get Schooled Attendance Challenge is that being in class day after day pays off in the long run. But some days have a more immediate payoff. Take yesterday at East High School for instance.
As a reward for another spike in the school’s attendance rate this year East was one of five schools nationwide to be selected for a stop on the Get Schooled Victory Tour. And yesterday the tour arrived in the persons of Percy (Master P) Miller and two of his famous kids, Cymphonique and Romeo.
The family Miller is hip-hop royalty and as principals-for-a-day they visited classrooms in the morning before presiding at a raucous all-school assembly in the gym. BET program hosts Shorty Da Prince and Paigion were also in the house as the master and mistress of ceremonies and moderators of an impromptu forum on the importance of education as a springboard to young people’s dreams. Besides their high profiles as entertainers, each of the Miller celebrities emphasized their entrepreneurial interests in fields like film production and fashion design as examples of areas where education has served them well.
Cymphonique did an a cappella excerpt from one of her tunes in response to popular demand but the event was more pep rally/celebration than concert. Pneumatic bazookas lobbed t-shirts into the crowd. Da Prince wore a St. Louis Cardinals cap and showed off his pitching arm by firing a few t-shirts himself. Paigon was sporting an Iowa Hawkeyes shirt as she helped students onto the stage for gender-based dance challenges and passed out 8×10 glossies of the guest principals.
Jason Pollock, producer of “Undroppable,” the documentary film that features East students, was back with a preview of a “Gangnam Style” video he shot at a similar assembly last November and helped fire up the crowd before the Millers took center stage.
Romeo Miller’s resume includes a stint on the basketball team while he was in college at USC, so it was inevitable that he be asked for a prediction on the eventual outcome of the NBA playoffs.
“I like the (Indiana) Pacers because I used to play with a guy on their team,” he said, “but it’s hard to imagine anybody beating Lebron (James) and the (Miami) Heat.” Then he thought for a moment. “Of course, the (San Antonio) Spurs are a veteran team,” he added. “You could say their experience makes them the team with the most education, so watch out for them.”
Get Schooled is a non-profit organization that motivates students to graduate from high school and succeed in college by using the media, technology and popular culture that is an integral part of their lives. Get Schooled’s work is boosted by partners like Viacom and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In its first two years, Get Schooled has reached more than 2.5 million kids and built a national network of more than 600 middle and high schools.
