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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.

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    One of the best ways to learn a language is to immerse yourself in it in multiple ways – listen, observe, study, practice. That approach to learning a new language also happens to be an effective way to learn and become proficient with Standards for Professional Learning. Reading the 11 […]
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    Twenty years ago, this journal, which was then called JSD, was my first introduction to the unique considerations involved in evaluating professional learning. I was struck by how field leaders like Hayes Mizell, Joellen Killion, and Thomas Guskey provided guidance so elegant that the complex process of program evaluation seemed […]
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    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 […]
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    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 […]
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    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 […]
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    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 […]
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    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 […]
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    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 […]
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    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 […]
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    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 […]
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