Chapter 6. Administering Your Course

"If you can't do, teach. If you can't teach, administrate."

So says a popular idiom, but while administrators often bear the brunt of your angst as an educator, their responsibilities outside of your classroom counterbalance yours inside it. Similarly, your energetic interaction during class is complemented by your administrative preparation before school starts.

This is similar to the debate between leadership and management. Leadership is an elusive concept to comprehend and a harder idea to implement, but a good leader can make a great impact. Yet, leadership cannot succeed in a vacuum.

Leadership might ignite a fire, but effective management keeps it burning. The late Warren Bennis, former distinguished professor of business administration at the University of Southern California, shared this concept: "Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality."

Your task is to translate your curriculum into an...