Meet Queen B.E.E.

Our founder is Shakir McDonald but everyone calls her “Queen B.E.E.”. Shakir is a mom of 2 amazing kiddos, wife to one pretty cool dude and became “Queen B.E.E” to 1000’s of youth in her nearly 20 years in education. Shakir’s journey began in the classroom where she taught 4th-6th grade. She left the classroom because she began to see the need to support youth after school. Shakir then started The B.E.E. Academy an afterschool Tutoring and Academic Coaching program to help youth realize their BRILLIANCE through EDUCATION and EMPOWERED them to be successful in school and in life. The B.E.E. Academy thrived for nearly 2 decades and still serves student onsite and online.

The B.E.E. Academy was developed to uplift other people’s children but, The B.E.E. Kid’s box was created to uplift her own child. Shakir lovingly jokes that she “has a daughter who rarely saw a bad grade and my son who rarely saw a good one”. However, It was her son’s academic challenges that made the mom in her spring into action. Shakir knew that her son was brilliant and had lots of great qualities. She also knew that when he “got out of school”, that he would be fine, but she didn’t know how to bridge the gap to ensure he was “Future Ready”. Shakir set out to find out what skills he’d need “after school” to be successful. This is where she learned about “Soft Skills” or non-cognitive skills essential for success that we came to call “Scholar Skills”. This was life changing!

Shakir realized that if she could teach these skills to her son, he’d have more success in school and likely after school as well. So, she developed a series of children’s books, one for each Scholar Skills with characters based on her children and other children that she’d worked with that were all brilliant but all either had thoughts, habits, character or skills gaps that prevented them from soaring.

After years of developing this model with children in and out of school she developed a proven, evidence based model that develops the Scholar Skills essential for lifelong success.