Suzanne Bouffard
Senior Vice President, Communications & Publications
Suzanne Bouffard is senior vice president of communications and publications at Learning Forward. She is the editor of The Learning Professional, Learning Forward’s flagship publication. She also contributes to the Learning Forward blog and webinars. With a background in child development, she has a passion for making research and best practices accessible to educators, policymakers, and families. She has written for many national publications including The New York Times and the Atlantic, and previously worked as a writer and researcher at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She has a Ph.D. in developmental psychology from Duke University and a B.A. from Wesleyan University. She loves working with authors to help them develop their ideas and voices for publication.
All Articles
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New roles, new challenges: Learning helps us thrive
I always enjoy asking people about the paths that have led them to their current jobs. More often than not, those paths have included some unexpected twists and turns. (My own path is no exception.) Even people who are working in the professions they dreamed about as children describe surprises […] -
Which way to the principal’s office?
Many professions have long runways to leadership, with mentorship and increasing levels of responsibility. Lead prosecutors start as assistant district attorneys, surgeons often complete a fellowship after residency, many business and nonprofit leaders move through the ranks of assistant director or vice president. In contrast, the path to school leadership […] -
When it comes to understanding students, we are always learners
The great promise of public schools is that they serve all children equitably and effectively. Doing so is essential and complex because students’ needs are so diverse. Ideally, educators have a broad knowledge base and skill set for meeting learners’ needs from Day One in the classroom. But it’s also […] -
7 articles to make the most of this year's professional learning
The start of the school year is a great time to take stock of your professional learning practices. Your strategic priorities are in focus and your calendars are set, but have you made sure your professional learning strategies are keeping pace with the latest research and insights? Have you made […] -
How SEL can reduce educator burnout
Amid rising levels of educator burnout and turnover (ERS, 2023a, b; Kurtz, 2022), there has been a lot of talk about prioritizing educator wellness. Wellness means different things to different people, but many experts agree that true wellness isn’t about simply going to a yoga class or even taking a […] -
Make every minute count, for educators and students
Time is a perennial challenge for educators, one that is embedded in nearly all conversations about professional learning. The topic has been discussed in some form in nearly every issue of The Learning Professional, but it’s so fundamental that we periodically shine a spotlight on it with time-themed issues. While […] -
Can workshops be high-quality professional learning?
One of the defining features of high-quality professional learning is that it is ongoing, not a one-off event. Learning Forward’s definition of professional learning, which appears in U.S. education legislation, specifies that meaningful professional learning activities “are sustained (not stand-alone, 1-day, or short term workshops), intensive, collaborative, job-embedded, data-driven, and […] -
Acceleration keeps students moving forward. How do we do it?
When our team began planning this issue of The Learning Professional, we asked ourselves: What do we not yet know about unfinished learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and what do we need to know to move forward? We wanted to go deeper than the well-documented fact that many students […] -
Connecting across grades helps teachers close student learning gaps
To accelerate learning with just-in-time support, educators need a set of skills and knowledge about the continuum of student learning and development over time. Vertical alignment of concepts and skills across grade levels is one way to develop that knowledge base and determine what students know, what they have already […] -
How sharing stories of progress helps move us forward
We all know that change takes time, but do schools have that time? With students and schools facing urgent, widespread challenges, it can feel like the pace of many improvement approaches is simply too slow. And yet, it’s clear we get nowhere when we take a scattershot approach to teaching […]
