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Assistant principals play a central role in school leadership—connecting instruction, student support, and school culture. The Vermont Assistant Principals Conference offers a focused, one-day opportunity to build your leadership practice alongside colleagues from across the state who understand the demands of the role. The day also includes targeted workshops and time to connect with peers during a welcome session and lunch. Whether you are new to the role or bring years of experience, you will leave with practical tools, fresh perspective, and a stronger professional network.
Keynote: Dr. Joelle van Lent is a licensed psychologist with over 25 years of experience working with children, families, and child serving agencies. Dr. van Lent has expertise as a therapist, clinician, evaluator, consultant, and trainer. Her work focuses on child and adolescent mental health, family therapy, trauma, and neurodivergence. Dr. van Lent’s approach is geared toward fostering resilience and creating communities that support healthy development. She is currently in private practice based in the northwestern part of Vermont and works across the state with schools and agencies.
Workshops Options Include:
Workshop 1: Having Difficult Conversations with Parents and Caregivers: Supporting Families While Sustaining Yourself with Dr. Joelle van Lent : School leaders routinely manage emotionally charged conversations with parents about behavior, discipline, safety, attendance, and student support needs. These situations highlight how our current climate has created confusion for parents related to what types of stress are growth promoting versus detrimental for their children and adolescents. For the school administrator, repeated exposure to conflict, urgency, and others’ distress can contribute to compassion fatigue, making it harder to remain patient, empathic, and grounded over time. This workshop will help school leaders approach difficult parent conversations with clarity, empathy, and confidence while protecting their own well-being. Participants will learn brief de-escalation and communication strategies, ways to set respectful boundaries, and self-regulation practices that can reduce the emotional toll of high-stakes family interactions. Using realistic school-based scenarios and sample language, the session will emphasize student-centered problem solving, collaborative family partnerships, and sustainable leadership practices. Participants will leave with tools to navigate conflict constructively without sacrificing accountability, connection, or their own capacity to continue caring.
Workshop 2: Beyond the Rubric: Building a Culture of Transformative Supervision & Evaluation with Sarah Pickering
Move beyond compliance-driven rubrics and discover how to make supervision and evaluation a powerful catalyst for teacher growth and school improvement. This session reimagines the evaluation process as an ongoing partnership focused on professional learning, instructional excellence, and meaningful feedback. Participants will explore strategies to shift from evaluative to developmental mindsets while building trust-based relationships that make supervision a welcome opportunity. Learn how to facilitate reflective conversations, align feedback with teacher goals, and use multiple data sources to build a comprehensive picture of each teachers’ individualized practice.
Workshop 3: From Magic to Mayhem: An Assistant Principal’s Guide to the Unexpected with Dovid Yagoda The assistant principalship is a role defined by the unexpected. One minute you’re solving a routine problem; the next, you’re navigating a difficult conversation, untangling competing perspectives, or responding to a situation you never saw coming or maybe did! This highly interactive conference invites assistant principals to learn by doing through humor, hands-on activities, collaborative strategies, a little bit of magic, and plenty of opportunities to think differently about leadership. Participants will explore practical strategies for communication, perspective-taking, problem-solving, and navigating challenging interactions. The session concludes with a surprise challenge that asks participants to recognize a difficult conversational pattern, understand what is happening beneath the surface, and develop their own strategy for responding effectively. Come prepared to participate, laugh, question your assumptions, and leave with a few new tricks for your AP toolbox.
Workshop 4: Reflection to Action: Advancing Inclusive Practices in Schools with Dr. Meagan Roy
Vermont education leaders share a commitment to ensuring that our schools work for all students, including students with disabilities. Yet schools face increasing challenges in sustaining inclusive practices. Enrollment decline, workforce challenges and increasing student need has caused an increase in the number of Vermont students who receive their education outside of the general education environment. But what does it really look like to create the conditions for inclusive schools – and where can leadership teams begin? In this workshop, leaders will examine the current research about evidence-based practices for inclusive schools and the leadership conditions needed to support those practices. Then, they will explore practical strategies for reflecting on their school’s practices—and develop real-time responses to bring back to their teams.
FAQs
Do I need to be an assistant principal to attend? No. The keynote and workshops will be beneficial for many roles. If you review the content and see elements that are related to your work and/or want to support your assistant principal(s) by attending, please do so.
Will any of the sessions be hybrid in case I can’t attend in person? No, these sessions will be available in-person only on this occasion.
Cancellation Policy: For all Vermont Principals’ Association professional learning events, the VPA must be notified of any cancellations no later than 10 days prior to the event. Cancellation notifications received after the 10 day deadline will be subject to a fee of 50% of the total cost of registration. The reason for this 50% policy is it allows us to at least recoup the venue and food costs counts for the event which are locked in with the venue about ten days ahead of an event.