Principal Playbook / How It Works
Inside the participant portal: the dashboard that tells you where you are, the eleven-part lesson, the working field manual, the library, coaching, and how progress is tracked.
Signing in does not present a catalogue. It presents your position in the school year and the single next thing to do. A new principal in October does not need to browse. They need to know what is due, what is coming, and who to ask.
Your current stage
Current focus
Understand Your School Before You Lead It
Next action
Complete the Good, Bad and Ugly Assessment
An example of the dashboard summary a participant sees on arrival.
Consistency is the point. A principal working a lesson at ten at night should never have to work out how this one is arranged.
A short explanation of what the participant will learn and why it matters at this point in the year.
What a principal should understand once the lesson is complete.
Video, presentation, written content, or a combination of the three.
Why this leadership practice matters, and what a building looks like without it.
How Dr. Bishop recommends approaching it, drawn from seventeen years of doing it.
The actual actions, procedures and tools the principal should use.
Downloadable templates and worked examples, versioned and filed against the lesson.
An interactive exercise or worksheet. Multiple choice, short answer, reflection, self-assessment, checklist, download-and-complete worksheet, document upload, scenario, survey or knowledge check.
A real task the principal completes in their own school.
Questions to consider, saved to the account as private notes.
The participant closes the lesson themselves, once the required components are done. Nothing completes automatically.
Organised by Pre-Season, Quarters 1 to 4, Post-Game and the appendix, and available inside the account from the first day of the program.
Where technically possible, notes and completed worksheets are saved to the account, so the manual accumulates rather than resets.
Every resource carries a name, description, program stage, quarter, lesson, type, file, version, date added, visibility and download permission. That metadata is what lets a participant reach the same template from the calendar or from the subject.
Quarter 4 → Testing → Spring Testing Calendar
Difficult Conversations → Staff → Conversation Template
Private channel
Submit a question with the situation behind it, a category and an urgency, and attach a document if it helps. Dr. Bishop responds inside the portal, and the history of your questions and answers stays private to you. It does not behave like a public discussion forum.
Session type 01
Scheduled sessions with your cohort, with preparation materials issued against the session record beforehand.
Session type 02
Live virtual sessions carrying a date, time, topic, meeting link and attached materials.
Session type 03
One-to-one time on what is happening in your building this month. Administrators assign participants to sessions from the console.
Between sessions
Every lesson closes by naming what to bring into your next session, so coaching time starts from something specific rather than from a blank page.
A simple progress indicator: lessons completed, activities completed, quarter completion and overall program progress.
A far more detailed view across the cohort: how many participants are enrolled, how many are active, how many have completed each stage, and where activities are overdue.
Automated and configurable from the admin console, so the program reaches people who are not sitting in the portal waiting.
Generated at completion, carrying the participant name, completion date, program and cohort, Dr. Bishop’s signature, and a certificate identifier where one is required.
Next
Colophon
Principal Playbook runs as a full school year for individual principals and as a cohort for districts. To ask about the next intake, a district cohort, a keynote or a consulting engagement, start a conversation, or write directly to the address below.
