A golden guest drops into Girls’ High — famous alum Jill Scott encourages Philly students to ‘be weird’
“Please continue just keep moving forward,” the singer said. “There will be things that will hurt your feelings, there will be things that seem like they’re going to break your stride. Nah. Nah.”
Jill Scott sang publicly — and got her first standing ovation — on stage at the Philadelphia High School for Girls in the late 1980s.
On Thursday, Scott got another standing ovation at Girls’ High, but this time, she came as a Grammy-winning singer, actress, and poet who has performed at the White House four times and earned international acclaim.
Scott couldn’t sleep Wednesday night, she said, and she cried on the drive to her alma mater, where officials from Philadelphia Mural Arts and the Philadelphia School District unveiled the design for a mural featuring Scott that will be painted on the school’s North Broad Street facade later this year.
When Scott, Girls’ High class of 1990, strolled into the auditorium, flawless in an orange-white-and-gold print dress and tall straw hat, the school’s 700 students erupted into deafening cheers. “JILL SCOTT I LOVE YOU,” one young woman shouted, as Scott wiped her eyes and waved.
The music Scott has put into the world, meeting kings and presidents and accepting trophies — that was born at Girls’, she said — “all of that spark from being here in this safe space for girls and young women to grow and thrive and think.”
Scott loved her time at Girls’ High, but she didn’t have an easy road. Her family struggled financially, and she missed 48 days of school her senior year, so she had to attend summer school to earn her diploma. Not walking at graduation with her class was a blow, but also a lesson, Scott said.
Girls’ High “meant a lot to me,” Scott said: she remembered vividly when she earned admission to the magnet school, how thrilled her family was. “I carry it with a great deal of pride.”
Scott’s advice to her Girls’ High sisters
Scott was kicked out of three vocal groups because she was “weird,” she said. She encouraged her Girls’ High sisters to embrace what makes them unique.
“I need you to go ahead and be weird,” Scott said. “I need you to be different. Continue to be brilliant young women.”
Take her life as a lesson, Scott said — she stumbled, but failure, trusting her instincts and wandering instructed her, always. When she was growing up in Philadelphia, she’d borrow her cousin’s bus pass and roam the city — looking at the murals, randomly getting off at a stop in South Philadelphia, and encountering an older Italian woman who spoke no English but who had Scott sit on her steps and eat her homemade food.
“Please continue just keep moving forward,” Scott said. “There will be things that will hurt your feelings, there will be things that seem like they’re going to break your stride. Nah. Nah.”
Despite challenging financial circumstances, Scott said she grew up “very joyful and very loved.” The things she encountered and the people who encouraged her make the Girls’ High honor especially sweet and “surreal,” she said.
“I’m from 23rd and Lehigh ... and now I’m on the side of my high school,” she said. “It’s crazy.”
‘We needed this’
Azeb Kinder, president of the Girls’ High alumnae association, met Scott at Girls’ High when they were students in 1987.
“From the day I met her, I knew she was special,” Kinder said. “I can see talent.”
Scott embodies the Girls’ High spirit, Kinder said.
“You carry the name of the Philadelphia High School for Girls everywhere you go,” said Kinder. “When they see you coming down that hall, they know who’s coming. They see you walking that walk, mama.”
Thursday was a proud day for Girls’ in more than one way. The school has had a tough stretch, enduring international spotlight and a principal change over last year’s graduation, when a student’s diploma was temporarily withheld after she danced, rather than marched sedately, across the stage.
Girls’ is also coping with changes to how students are admitted, underenrollment, and the fallout from the loss of a teacher who was charged with attempting to sexually abuse a 16-year-old student.
But students, alumnae and parents have banded together to shore up the school, and the school district, after threatening significant cuts at the school, has agreed to hold off.
Mia Coleman was one of a trio of students who danced to “Womanifesto,” one of Scott’s songs, while Scott watched, recording the performance with her phone and clapping afterward.
The whole day felt amazing, said Coleman, 17.
“It’s a great way to end the year,” she said. “We needed this.”