• Hello. I'm
    Armando

    Popular Educator

    Researcher

    Community Mobilizer

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About Me

Who Am I?

Hello I'm Armando J. Torres I'm a Ph.D. student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign within the Education Policy, Organization and Leadership (EPOL) department.

My program concentration is Global Studies in Education. My research focuses on the future of public education, education policy, digital transformation for development, and community-based mobilization, entreprenuership and innovation in the global south. My research aims to support and facilitate the co-production of local knowledges using appropriate analog and digital/non-digital technologies to transform communities, sustainable development paradigms, and the community educators/mobilizers that support the flourishment of people and planet.

I welcome you to learn about my work and my research to collaborate in making great strides in global public and community education, technology, and innovation for more sustainable and just future.

Where I work

Sustainable Futures Lab

Forum on the Future of Public Education

Why I Work

As a child, I recall running around, playing and joking with my cousins about how many bullet holes we can count on the stucco walls of my Uncle's Chico's house. I grew up normalizing gun shot wounds to family members and even deaths due to gun and gang violence.

My Father emigrated from Guadalajara Jalisco, Mexico in the 70's to pursue the "American Dream" in the United States of America. Hopeful, but with little alternative, his 10 siblings and single mother would settle in one of the most violent cities in the US: Compton, California. My father left Compton at the peak of violence in the early 1990s to the San Gabriel Valley (east Los Angeles county) where he would later bring my Mother, across the US boarder to start our família.

In 1994, we settled in El Monte, California, home to immigrant families looking to work in the local industry. My mother worked in a textile factory nearby, while my father worked as a metal worker in a dental lab. In 1995, El Monte would garner worldwide attention for exposing the forced labor of 72 Thai nationals who were being held captive in a makeshift factory. This was not major news to us as many local families worked under similar conditions. My mother, like other family members working in the garment industry would testify to the long hours and limited bathroom breaks to meet production quotas. Even at a young age, I recall the physical toll it had on the hands and body of my mother who would later suffer from chronic joint pain. My experience as a first-generation Chicanx student attending Title I funded schools (K-12) within a gang dominated and working-class, immigrant community shaped my motivation to learn about my family history, my community, and the world. Frankly, I wanted to understand why some lived more dignified and more just lives than others. Through my global studies education, I came to understood why there are winners and losers within a neoliberal and global economy.

As an "at-promise" (compared to a deficit oriented "at-risk") youth, I credit public assistance, education, and after-school community programs for keeping me fed physically and intellectually, while keeping me safe until I gained the strength to persist in my learning. In third grade, my teacher Ms. Ramos, unknowingly, would change the course of my life. In a parent-teacher meeting, for the first time in my life, I would hear someone call me "intelligent" and not a "travieso" (a menace)," which drove me to focus and prove her right. I went from below average grades and fighting in school to earning my first district writing recognition at the end of 3rd grade and earning an academic scholarship 7th to 12th grade. More importantly, I received the means to see beyond my own neighborhood; beyond my own pain. Between spending summers in my family's poor neighborhood in Mexico and my first visit to Rio de Janeiro's favelas, I understood that my community, my family, my love extended well beyond any borders. I no longer felt alone; I felt united, empowered. Through the power of education, community, and the affordances of digital technology, I have been able to maintain relationships of love and solidarity across the world to protect people and planet.

Today, I entrust my faith in education "as the practice of freedom" to transform the world, as it did my own.

"The academy is not paradise. But learning is a place where paradise can be created. The classroom, with all its limitations, remains a location of possibility. In that field of possibility we have the opportunity to labor for freedom, to demand of ourselves and our comrades, an openness of mind and heart that allows us to face reality even as we collectively imagine ways to move beyond boundaries, to transgress. This is education as the practice of freedom." -bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom

Quality Education for All

Sustainable Development

Community-based research

ICTs 4 Development

My research explores the effects and opportunities of digital tools on community culture, education, and mobilization in Brazilian Favelas and the World.

Collaborate
What I do

My expertise

Research

International participatory research collaborator in English, Spanish and Portuguese.

Non-profit

Non-profit board member, founder, advisor, and community mobilizer in US, Mexico, and Brazil.

Education Tech

Expertise in Digital Environments for Learning, Teaching and Agency (DELTA).

Education Policy

Policy researcher and fellow on the future of public education and digital classrooms in the US and abroad.

Student Affairs

Expertise in student affairs, student development, and DEI initiatives in US higher education.

ICTs for Development

Global researcher on digital transformation for development (DX4D) and Member of the Comparative International Education Society, ICT4D sig and ICT4D Think Lab.

Cups of tea
Collegues
Countries
Languages
Education

My Education

Expected May 2026 within the Department of Education Policy, Organization, and Leadership.

August 2019 - Present
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Conferred on the 13 of May of 2016
University of Southern California

Conferred on the 15 of June of 2012
Concentration in Latin America and Minor in Professional Writing
University of California, Santa Barbara.

Experience

Work Experience

Teaching/Research/Graduate Assistant and Fellow 2019-Present

During my time at the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, I have served as a teaching assistant for graduate courses: EPOL 520 - Education and Globalization, EPOL 483 - Learning Technologies, ERAM 581 - Evaluation with Applied Survey Design I & II, and ERAM 550 - Methods of Education Inquiry; and undergraduate courses: EDUC 201 - Identity and Differnce in Education and EDUC 202 - Social Justice, School and Society where I have been consistently included in the List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by Their Students by the Center of Innovation for Innovation in Teaching and Learning.

In addition to teaching, I have served as a Summer Pre-doctoral fellow and Distinguished Graduate fellow within the Illinois Graduate College, the Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) fellow, Lemann Center Graduate fellow, and current Edwin J. O'Leary fellow.

Last I have assumed roles as a researcher/collaborator, consultant, and community liaison in Tokyo, Japan; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; the state of Illinois and Champaign County; Johannesburg, South Africa; New York, NY; and Guadalajara, Mexico communicating, researching, and writing professionally in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. Japanese was only used in conversation during my visit to Dokkyo University, while coordinating logistics for a 2019 study abroad program between Dokkyo University and the College of Education Office of International Programs.

Admissions Counselor 2016-2018

Due to my frustration with my high school college preparation and high school counselor (who told me I would never be admitted to a 4-year university), I was eager to serve as an admissions counselor within the Undergraduate admissions office at the University of California at Santa Barbara. My role focused on Spanish speaking outreach througout central and southern California high schools, with an advocacy focus on Latinx and first-generation college student communities.

International Student Advisor 2015-2016

After understanding the concerns of international students at USC in my leadership role in Graduate Student Government, I was moved to advised and prepared international students at the USC International Academy for US undergraduate and graduate programs.

English Language Program Coordinator 2014-2015

With my experience teaching English in Brazil and coordinating Kids In Sports, I served as the coordinator for the English Language Program within the Office of International Services at USC. I also taugh the advanced class and organized fieldtrips offering cultural immersion and social inclusion opportunities for J1, J2 and F2 scholars and dependents. This experience led to the development of a practice-based adult education course for housekeeping workers using Paulo Freire's liberatory and experiential pedagogy. Courses were held in community from the comfort of participant homes. The goal was to provide basic English speaking skills to communicate with staff and building employes at their workplace.

Site Coordinator 2013-2015

As a former "at-promise" youth and past participant, I joined the LA-based Kids In Sports non-profit organization to lead and promote education persistence and social inclusion in my own community through recreation and after-school programming. I felt it was important that my first responsability after graduating from college be to comeback to my neighborhood and give back to the community that supported me in getting to college in the first place.

My Work

Photos

Recriando Raizes
Read and Visit

Recriando Raizes

Recriando Raizes in a community-based organization I have been collaborating and supporting since 2020. In 2014, I was introduced to a social project named CEMASI in Lagartixa, Costa Barros. I made a visit and saw first hand the resilience and impact of the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. This space in 2019 would be embraced by Recriando Raizes, which was quickly expanding and extending their reach throughout Costa Barros. In 2020, I had the privilage of speaking with Ilma Rocha, the founder of Recriando Raizes and would be invited to visit in 2021. I worked and shadowed Dona Ilma for a year during the most pressing wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. We made visits to each site daily throughout Pavuna, Costa Barros and Belford Roxo. My role ranged from support the growth of the organization to day-to-day tasks like carrying and transporting cookie and food donations.

Recriando Raízes was founded 15 years ago and originated in the Costa Barros community, in the North Zone of Rio de Janeiro. This story began after the death of a teenager who asked for help to escape the world of drugs, leading Ilma Rocha to create a social project with the aim of preventing another young life from being lost to crime.As a son of immigrant Mexican parents who settled in Compton California in the 80's, I connected deeply with Dona Ilma, which initiated a lifelong committment to the transformation of people and planet.

Read my article about Recriando Raizes.

Get in Touch

Contact

Education Bldg, 1310 S 6th St, Champaign, IL 61820