Shoka says, "Where are you all going in such a doggone hurry?" Don't ask because I don't know how we did it, but we did! It was last Friday morning when I awoke, on my own, absent of any alarm bells or sounds, at exactly 6:47 a.m. I know that seems plenty early considering it was still fully dark outside, but if you consider that my normal waking time is somewhere between 5:30 a.m. and, at very latest, 6 a.m. on a school morning, I knew immediately I was in severe trouble!

One minute you're holding your newborn baby, next thing you know, your little one is already 3 years old! Time to sign up for preschool. Time for dress-up, play dough, sandboxes, snack time, and singing in circle time. Yay!

But wait -- maybe you think your toddler is ready for preschool. But is he, really? Is the preschool ready for her? Better think this through a bit, first. Here are some signs your toddler might not be so ready for preschool after all.

A lunch lady fired from her job for "stealing" from the school is back in the cafeteria today, and it's making me feel better about the kinds of people who work with our kids. That's because Dianne Brame's alleged crime wasn't evil. She was just trying to put food in the tummy of one hungry child.

Brame was fired earlier this month after school officials found out she'd let a fourth grader rack up a $45 bill -- $35 more than the cut-off. But when the community found out why she'd done it, they started putting pressure on administrators at Hudson Elementary in Webster Groves, Missouri to put her back on the payroll. Turns out they actually like people working at a school who really care about kids.

It isn't often I say I'm wrong. But I've sat, like many parents in America today, with tears rolling down my face as I've updated, updated, updated the news sites, hoping that the news of the school shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut will somehow magically change. That suddenly we will learn that they made a mistake, there weren't 27 people killed (the latest report), some 18 innocent children. But magic doesn't exist.

And so where a few months ago I railed against school shooting drills, I am sitting here sad, broken. I was wrong. We need school shooting drills in America, in our high schools, and even more so ... in our elementary schools.

Of all the bad ideas teachers have come up with lately, making a class full of teenagers write suicide notes has to be in the top five ... at least. And yet, that's exactly what happened at Antoine-Delafont, a secondary school in France. Thirteen and 14-year-old kids were supposed to pretend they were prepared to end it all, and then explain themselves on paper.

Parents and other teachers are -- not surprisingly -- upset. And I can't blame them. We need to talk about suicide with our kids, but this is not the way.

We keep hearing the same thing, over and over again: Our kids' schools are slipping behind. We're not keeping up with the rest of the world. Our kids won't be able to compete with kids from competitive countries like Singapore and Finland. Is it true? How do we know? Well, now, there's a tool that lets you find out exactly how your own child's school district compares with schools around the world. Are you ready to face the numbers?

The Atlantic has a school ranking interactive map you can use to look up your kids' school district to find out how it ranks globally... gulp! First find your state, then your county, then your district. And then, start to panic. Or feel proud?

All right, why do you send your kids to school? To learn? Or to give their teacher massages and scratch his back?

What? It's not the latter? Well, then you better not send your kiddo to Taylorsville Elementary School in Utah. There's a third grade teacher there who was caught ordering his students to scratch his back and rub his feet. And yes, he still has his job.

There's nothing like an innovative teacher to get kids motivated. But there's innovating. Then there's telling kids that if they don't reach their goals in reading they will be subjected to humiliation as their classmates use markers to draw all over their faces.

The kids were given a second option: lose out on recess. Think that sounds crazy? Just wait until you hear what the parents thought of this little teaching trick at the Cassia School District in Idaho.