Three Little Lee

15/08/2026

♟️The game used to feel like checkers. Move forward, jump when you can, hope it works out. For Black children in rooms that were never built around them, it was never checkers. It is chess.

🚌My mother learned that at twelve, when she integrated a public school. She was thrown onto the board and made to learn the rules. Her inexperience then shaped my experience now.

I know what it is to be counted when the numbers help and sacrificed when they don't. Welcomed in as "diversity" only to be discarded when the quota is met.

❓But let's address the question: Why don't you just move? Why send your child somewhere they will be the only one, or one of a few? Belonging is a not just a zip code and moving is not always a choice. Not everyone can pick up a home, a job, a whole life to search for another number. For many of us, this is the only room there is and we have the right to be here. Chasing diversity elsewhere is no guarantee of a room better than the room you left behind.

📣Sometimes the voices telling us to run are our own. Black people telling Black people in Mississippi to leave the land their families bled for. To walk away from acres held through generations, kept in spite of everything, as if the response to hostility should be to surrender. Staying is not stubbornness, and leaving is not always freedom.

📝You do not survive this by hoping, or win it one reactive move at a time. Our children are not pieces on someone else's board. They are the players. But they need us to teach them the game. Strategy. Positioning. And the words to advocate for themselves before the school year decides where they sit.

👩🏾‍🏫That is why I built Back to School Basics. The words for the conversations that shape your child's placement, their support, their room. Clear, customizable, ready to send. Read the full post on the blog, then grab the templates.

15/08/2026

15/08/2026

Its primary season. We are witnessing what happens when you don’t LISTEN to Black Women, Support Black Candidates, and ELECT a Black Woman.

The question is: Have we LEARNED 😩

Racism is expensive.

You are NOT in the tax bracket that benefits from the current policy positions of MAGA.

KKKaroline ONLY bailed when she realized she was expendable. What is it going to take for you?

We shall see 🍿

Edited and reposted to fix typo 🤦🏾‍♀️

08/08/2026

📚Back to school isn’t fun for everyone.

😩Some of us are walking into this school year already braced for a fight. And I understand why. Maybe a teacher failed your child before. Maybe one failed you, a long time ago, and you still remember exactly how it felt. Maybe last year was so hard you are still catching your breath.

🤗That is real. You are allowed to carry it. Just be careful not to hand it to a person who hasn’t earned it yet.
When we walk in as the adversary, our children feel it. They learn to see the classroom as a battlefield before they have even sat down in it.

🥰A relationship with your child’s teacher is exactly that. A relationship. And the healthiest ones start with a little benefit of the doubt on both sides and a lot of grace.

👩🏽‍🏫The teacher is the professional in the room. Setting the tone is their job, not our children’s, and not ours to carry alone. A good teacher leads that relationship in the right direction. They reach out first. They tell you what they see. They make you a partner, not a problem.

🙏🏽I try to go in hopeful and clear-eyed at the same time. I bring what I know about my child. I stay open to what they will learn about them too. And when a moment does come up that needs a careful email, I don’t scramble for the words anymore. I keep them ready. That is half of staying out of the fight, being prepared instead of reactive.

💌If starting the year on the right foot feels easier said than done, I made you something. My Back to School Basics email guide gives you ready-to-use email templates for the situations that come up all year long, from the first friendly introduction to the harder conversations you hope you won’t need but sometimes do. You don’t have to find the words in the hard moment. They’re already written. Grab it at the link in bio or comment CLASS and I’ll send it your way.

07/08/2026

👩🏽‍🏫Your emotion isn’t the problem. It’s proof you care.
Excited. Frustrated. Worried. Even angry. Behind every one of those words is just a parent who is engaged. Who is paying attention. Who shows up.

🤔Schools say they want engaged parents. Until the engagement has a feeling attached to it. Then suddenly you’re “a lot,” you’re “difficult,” you need to “watch your tone.” Engagement gets treated like a one-way street: they want you involved, just quietly, gratefully, and on their terms.

🚩So hear me on this one: defensiveness is a red flag. A secure professional can sit across from a parent’s big feelings and stay curious instead of defensive, because they know your intensity is love, not an attack. The ones who can’t? For me, that defensiveness is grounds for a change.

🥰To the incredible educators who lean in when a parent cares loudly: thank you. You are the standard.

And to the mama who’s been made to feel like too much for caring too much: you were never too much. You were engaged. And stay engaged even when you are misunderstood.

🧠Comment CLASS if you want the words to say all of this clearly, warmly, and on the record. 💌