In this episode, Techa and Jen have the honor of interviewing Rosalynne Duff. Rosalynne is an educational activist, Ph. D student and all-around spiritual badass. Ros shares her wisdom on ideas of cultivating contemplative practices and reckoning with who you are from an equity lens. Her words are medicine, and her ideas are inspirational. Join Jen, Techa, and Ros for this mic drop worthy conversation around things that really matter and how to unveil yourself as an educator and human being.

Rosalynne Duff (She/ Her/ Hers) is an educator, leader, and healer with more than a decade of experience in urban education focusing on liberation and transformational pedagogy. In 2008, she launched her teaching career serving as a substitute teacher in Louisville, KY. In 2015, she migrated south to Atlanta, GA to serve as a Founding Teacher of Kindezi Old Fourth Ward in the Kindezi Charter Network. Following her passion for holistic education for students and teachers she transitioned into a leadership position as the Equity Coordinator of the CREATE Teacher Residency Program, a partner with Georgia State University. Rosalynne also holds a secular meditation certification in a cognitively-based compassion contemplative practice through Emory University’s Center for Contemplative Science and Compassion-Based Ethics.

Nationally, she has studied the intersectionality of social and emotional learning (SEL), mindfulness, equity, and leadership with a focus on academics through the Transformative Educational Leadership (TEL) program at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY. She is currently a facilitator-in-training with Millennium Forum. Internationally, she contributed knowledge to the creation of an innovative social and emotional curriculum with the SEE (Social, Emotional, and Ethical) Learning program. After the launch of the curriculum, she traveled to India to speak on the impact of SEE Learning in the classroom on a global teaching panel. Currently, she is a doctoral student at Georgia State University examining Teaching and Teacher Education while developing a framework for critical contemplative pedagogy, an integration of educational equity, SEL and academics.

Books Ros Recommends: 

Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own by Eddie Glaude Jr.

Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler

We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom by Dr. Bettina Love

Meditations of the Heart by Howard Thurman