Duff is currently the K-8 Art teacher and school-wide director of Service Learning at Hoboken Charter School.

Previous to HCS, he taught at a wide range of schools and art centers, including Saint Ann’s School, Johnson Atelier, NJ Center for Visual Arts, Stephen’s Institute of Technology, St. Phillips Academy, Ohio Wesleyan University, Princeton Day School, Emerson Elementary, and for the NJ SEEDS Young Scholars program, as well as the Great Lakes Colleges Arts Association w/ students from Oberlin College, Kenyon College, Ohio Wesleyn University, Denison University, etc.

Duff has also taught a number of art “outreach programs” including most recently: SAGE, Overlook Hospital, The Newark Boys and Girls Club(s), and The Academy Street Firehouse, as well as leading art outreach programs for the city of Tulsa, OK, and the city of Delaware, OH.

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Duff is a certified art teacher, and in the last three years was named a Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation teaching fellow, Teacher of the Year at HCS, and Outstanding Charter School Teacher in NJ.

He received the Governor’s State Teachers Award and was honored as one of the top 100 teachers in America by the Walt Disney HAND Awards for creative teaching. He was also just ranked as the #2 teacher in America via the P. Buckley Moss Foundation for Children’s Education who conducts the National Teacher of the Year competition.

He has just been named as New Jersey’s candidate to the American Stars of Teaching. This year he addressed the “Creative Mind(s)” conference at Sweet Briar College on his ground-breaking work at HCS; and he has also just garnered a Promising Practices Award via the National Character Education Partnership for his ACE (Art and Character Education) program, and was one the key players instrumental in the naming of Hoboken Charter School as one of the top 53 charter schools in American via the Center for Education Reform (CER).    

This year, SK also spoke at the National Character Education Conference in Washington, DC and the National Service Learning Conference in Minneapolis on the same program with Archbishop Desmund Tutu.

He and his teaching methods are the subject of a documentary currently airing on public TV entitled “Where’s the Ocean? – Art and Service Learning”; and he is now a sought after speaker regarding his teaching methods. Duff has taught his methods & philosophies regarding VISUAL ART & SERVICE LEARNING to other teachers and after school practitioners across the country via Partnership for After School Education (PASE) and through several service learning organizations and regional and national conferences.

His youth organization, AGGG!!! (Art of Greater Gravity and Giving) is branching out rapidly and being embraced and replicated by the Boys and Girls Clubs of NJ, as well as organizations such as the YMCA, Future Generation(s), Page Turners, Impact 21st Century, etc.

He also teaches poetry workshops to/for adults and teens and conducts programs for educators re: the teaching of poetry in the promotion of literacy and as a tool for grassroots advocacy. AND in addition, he writes both art and literacy curriculum for a variety of institutions. At present, Duff is penning a book under the working title of “How Art Saves the World” that deals with teaching art from multicultural perspectives, along with providing frameworks for successful hybrids of art and service learning, and dwelling on ways to use art to reach disenfranchised audiences and kids who learn in varied ways.