CAPS worn backwards, untucked shirts and corridor fist bumps made a Sydney school seem an unlikely place for Oprah mania, but for the students who idolise his songs, Jay-Z was her way to their hearts.
The US rap legend visited Canterbury Boys High School before being whisked off to the filming of the Oprah Winfrey show at the Opera House yesterday.
”The message he [told the boys was] you can be whatever you choose to be, you just have to work hard, believe in yourself and you can go anywhere,” said the principal, Leslee Mitton.
He was there thanks to a substitute teacher and self-confessed Oprah ”tragic”, Polly Dunning, who had answered a question on the talk show queen’s website about why the hip-hop superstar should visit.
Dunning, 22, wrote about her students’ lower socio-economic status and how 90 per cent are from non-English-speaking backgrounds. She detailed their love of hip-hop, and how Jay-Z is a good role model – from his business prowess to his relationship with his wife, Beyonce.
But Dunning did not think about it again until almost two weeks ago when she ”got the strangest phone call of my life”.
Production staff mostly kept details vague. Dunning was under the impression the show’s focus would be on education in Australia. It was expected Oprah’s team would announce to the students they were going to the show on Monday morning, but the biggest surprise occurred as Dunning read out her submission to the students.
”As she came to the end of it, about saying why she wanted Jay-Z to come to the school, he appeared … The kids, the looks on their faces, they just went hysterical,” Mitton said.
Dunning doesn’t remember the moment he walked through the door – though there were definitely hugs involved – but Mitton does. ”She started hyperventilating, then she started to cry,” she said.
Students put on an African drumming performance and year 11 music students sang Billionaire, which they had performed a week earlier for year 10′s graduation.
Coincidentally, the song lyrics say: ”I wanna be on the cover of Forbes magazine/ Smiling next to Oprah and the Queen.”
At the filming yesterday, the 480 students and their teachers were promised their own laptops, as well as computers for the library and specialist computers for the music room.
”I don’t think they can believe it; I can’t believe it,” Dunning said. ”The one thing I found really overwhelming is they’re so grateful for everything … As teachers we always tell them how important they are and how much we love them but to get it from people of that calibre, to get it from Jay-Z and from Oprah, [to be told] how important you are is just amazing.”
A year 9 student, Tyler Franks-Morgan, 15, said he and his friends always talk about Jay-Z and were really shocked when he arrived. ”We were screaming, everyone was screaming. Everyone was crying as well,” he said.
”It’s been a fantastic day, I’m still thrilled about what happened … What [Dunning] said to Jay-Z was magnificent … Everyone loves you now, always have, always will.”
