Upcoming Events - Vermont Adept Educational Institute Events

Upcoming Events

Transform your approach to student connection with Building Powerful Small Groups, an interactive workshop designed to help you cultivate safe, impactful environments where students truly thrive. In this session, you will explore the foundational steps for launching meaningful, safe support groups while unlocking dynamic activities and discussion frameworks that keep group momentum buzzing. By learning about Tuckman's 5 Stages of Group Development, you will gain the insights needed to navigate evolving group dynamics with confidence. Finally, you will discover how to implement intentional feedback opportunities, equipping you with actionable insights to continuously elevate the group experience.

Audience: Prevention Professionals working in schools or with youth. This workshop is designed to address how to run Educational Support Groups, one of the required strategies for DSU-Supported school prevention programs.

This session reviews evidence-based interventions for individuals with substance use disorders (SUD) who have experienced traumatic stressors. Participants will learn about non-verbal approaches informed by the neurobiology of trauma, stabilization and emotion regulation strategies, and trauma-focused interventions such as prolonged exposure. Theories of emotion, including biosocial theory, will be discussed to enhance understanding of emotional dysregulation on trauma and addiction. An integrated treatment model that incorporates dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) skills for addressing co-occurring trauma and substance use will be introduced, and participants will have an opportunity to practice selected exercises.

This session introduces self-affirmed motivational interviewing, an adaptation of motivational interviewing that strategically amplifies the use of affirmation to reduce self-stigma and strengthen motivation for change. Participants will learn how self-affirmation processes can be integrated into motivational interviewing and applied with individuals who have experienced traumatic stressors, including racial trauma. Drawing on research and clinical applications, the session will examine how self-affirmed motivational interviewing can support engagement, reduce self-stigma, and promote recovery. Role plays and clinical demonstrations will be used to enhance skill acquisition and facilitate application in practice settings.

Psychoeducational groups have become a foundation of the treatment process in both substance use and co-occurring disorders treatment modalities. This is especially true in outpatient settings where staff teach new skill sets while the client is still exposed daily to challenges and triggers. However, it is rare that staff have been specifically trained in the development and delivery of psychoeducational materials and the many facets that can make it an extremely productive intervention, or one that results in very little retention and application of the material presented. Psychoeducation is only useful if it results in knowledge and skill development that can be utilized immediately and "in the moment" it is needed. How information is chosen, taught, and reinforced during and across learning sessions can create opportunities for growth or result in the information being lost from memory beginning moments after it was taught. This training will occur in two separate sessions.