What's important? Howard Gardner said recently:  Decide what's important to learn and teach it in many different ways." A good curriculum map will present "What's important."  An engaged teacher will teach it in many different ways, from many different perspectives, in many different modes. What's important to teach: A concptual framework within which to organize knowledge Skills: cognitive, physical and expressive for interacting with the world. Shared vocabulary with which to communicate to others. Teachers work together to develop a framework of important concepts, skills and vocabulary for each unit, season, subject. Teachers, guided by a framework of concepts, skills and vocabulary, organize the specifics; lesson plans, materials, assessment tools, into a scope and sequence. These choices need not be prescribed. The engaged teacher will pick and choose from the universe of materials those materials and lessons that best fit the class before them.    Administrators map the curriculum in order to; Initiate and shepherd the process of coordinating curriculum into a coherent whole across all grades. Communicate the curriculum to the community. Spreadsheets are not a particularly helpful format through which to navigate a curriculum. What is needed is a true map, a pictoral representation of the curriculum that allows one to readily choose the appropriate level of curricular detail for the appropriate audience or the appropriate grade.  Just as you spread out a map, a picture of the whole (think Google map) and then zero in on the territory you are interested in for further detail, so you begin with a curricular overview and zero in on the particular level of specificity.