What'd You Do at School Today? The Evolution on Getting the Scoop

Every day the teacher hands you a note with everything from tears to food consumed to bowel movements. You are aware of what books she read, what friends she played with, and what songs she sang. Life is good!

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Not only will the teacher fill you in on the fun little details, so will your chatty 4-year-old, as she proudly hands you her messy artwork each day. At my child's pre-K, the teachers even write a daily letter and post it on the bulletin board outside the class for parents to read. So if your tot's answer to "what did you do today?" is "nothing, Mom," then you can lure her in with more specific questions like, "I saw you had earthworms in the classroom. How was that?"

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I hope you recycle, because you will be getting mountains of paperwork. From the behavior charts and the classroom requests to the homework and the PTA fliers, parents receive a lot of crumpled-up pieces of paper from the backpack (or placed neatly in a folder, if you're lucky). Some actually pertain to your tot's day — some do not. Your kid may even try to articulate an event that happened during the day, but usually it makes no sense, and you have to contact the teacher to figure out what the heck he was talking about anyway.

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Generally speaking, kiddos are jazzed to spill the beans on the latest bus or cafeteria gossip, but as for what they need to study or complete? Not so much. Thank goodness for RAZ Kids, those required student organizers, and, at the very least, report cards — or you'd be at a major loss here. Teachers can be good allies when fishing for information for these grades. "Honey, I've already emailed with your teacher, so think really hard, do you or do you not have a quiz to study for on Friday?"

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Middle school starts your (and your child's) journey on communicating with his school via the information highway. You find out about your kid's quiz tomorrow because your mom-pal posted a picture of her son studying for it on Facebook. Detention slips that need to be signed may go missing, but luckily his teacher also texted you about it. And thank goodness for Edmodo, Quizlet, and all those awesome programs keeping parents in the loop. Oh, and if your child has actually carried over the organizer habit from his elementary school days, peeking into that will give you some good intel as well.

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And then there comes the time where you just have to trust that your child will relay to you any information you need to know about her day. Sure, it will probably be in the form of a text, and yes, the only way you'll hear about tonight's football game is because she asks to go, but don't worry! You've both been prepping for this her entire educational career — you got this!

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