Dr. Diana Torres-Rivera

Dr. Diana Torres Rivera is an Oak Cliff neighbor and is the instructional coach at St. Cecilia Catholic School. Dr. Torres has been World Language Department Chair, and Latinos Unidos moderator at the Bishop Dunne Catholic School in Dallas since 2018. She was named the 2020 Halo Educator of the Year, and Texas Catholic School Teacher of the Year in 2021.

Dr. Torres is currently focusing on empowering teachers to achieve their full potential inside and outside of the classroom providing an antiracist-antibias lens to policy and practices at a systemic level informed by Catholic Social Teaching. Also working on implementing language acquisition teaching strategies in Spanish for K-12 education, and community engagement in the DFW area through community driven initiatives. She is an Academic with major interests in Academic and Cultural event planning. A long-term goal is to publish academic volumes on Caribbean Literature and Culture, adding to already published articles in several peer reviewed journals.

Dr. Torres Rivera earned her BA in Hispanic Studies from the University of Puerto Rico; a Master of Arts and Ph. D. in Spanish American Literature and History at the University of Seville. She’s taught undergraduate and graduate courses at universities in Puerto Rico and Spain and has spoken in conferences in Portugal and at the University of Oxford, UK where she spent a summer doing research, amongst others.

Born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Dr. Torres Rivera (or Dr. T like her students call her) moved to Dallas in 2015 where she began teaching at North Dallas High School before beginning work at Bishop Dunne in 2016. Aside from her passion for language, she’s an avid salsa dancer and an amateur gardener. Dr. Torres Rivera speaks Spanish, English, and Italian, has an interest in the intersectional character of the Caribbean, and can be seen on her front porch getting to know her neighbors with her husband Omar and three kids.