Jefna M. Cohen
Associate Editor
Jefna M. Cohen is associate editor at Learning Forward. She contributes to strategy and content for The Learning Professional journal, the Learning Forward blog, books, and other publications. She also facilitates relationships with the Learning Forward community of authors and members and our online audience. Cohen is a longtime educator with a unique blend of expertise in both education and writing. Her experience includes nearly twenty years of teaching in elementary school classrooms in Portland, Oregon, spanning a variety of settings, including Title I, private, and public charter schools. Cohen is also a copywriter and avid fiction creator. She holds a master of education from Portland State University and an undergraduate degree from Lewis & Clark College.
All Articles
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Q & A: Unraveling the myths of dyslexia
Maryanne Wolf is a scholar, teacher, and advocate for children and literacy. She is the director of the Center for Dyslexia, Diverse Learners and Social Justice at the UCLA School of Education and Information Studies. Her most recent book is Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World. […] -
Professional learning helps principal address achievement gap
Rodney Walker, a member of Learning Forward’s Academy Class of 2022 and principal of Brooklyn Park Elementary School in Baltimore, Maryland, was named 2023 National Distinguished Elementary School Principal of the Year by the Maryland Association of Elementary School Principals. As a part of Walker’s efforts to advance schoolwide excellence, […] -
Writers wanted for The Learning Professional in 2024
We are pleased to announce the themes for the upcoming year of Learning Forward’s journal, The Learning Professional. Narrowing down the collection of topics to six is always a challenge, but we did it with help from our readers and authors, through following thought leaders, and by constantly gathering ideas […] -
The school board’s role in a professional learning system
School boards are an important but often unacknowledged part of professional learning systems, although they allocate two essential resources: funding and time. To learn more about this role and how learning professionals can collaborate with school boards, we spoke with Verjeana McCotter-Jacobs, who was recently named the new executive director […] -
Don’t make time, rethink time
How do you overcome the challenges to finding time for meaningful professional learning? We asked seven experts in the field, and these practitioners offer powerful strategies for making better use of educator time. An example from Illinois centers student data in school systems as an essential component of a school’s […] -
How do we prepare teachers for accelerated learning? Experts weigh in.
When I was a primary classroom teacher, it was my goal for each student to make one year’s worth of growth in reading over the school year. My same-grade teachers stuck to that goal, too. It made sense because not only did it feel attainable, it also felt like a […] -
Educator’s professional learning transforms Texas school
When Noline Martin became assistant principal at Thurgood Marshall Elementary, a pre-K-6 school in Richardson, Texas, in 2017, the school was working its way up from being declared a failing campus two years earlier. It had recently improved to a “met standard” rating, but Martin knew the school could do […]
