Toronto holds a free public lecture almost every weeknight, more in any week than one person can attend. This list keeps the ones worth showing up for. Longer commentary on each lives at Marginalia.
Leizu Academy runs the tutoring inside Seminar Schools. An English-language school for students preparing for the Ontario curriculum, the IB Diploma, and university admissions. Sessions can run privately or in seminar format, in person or online, weekly or in concentrated blocks before assessments. Instruction is in English. Communication with families is available in English, Mandarin, French, and Farsi. Rates depend on the format and the family. The free class via The Agora is open to anyone.
A seminar is a small group of prepared readers working through a difficult text together until something none of them brought in alone shows up. Seminar Schools exists to host that practice, paid and unpaid, indoors and outdoors, for whoever wants to enter it.
A seminar grows minds because each reader must defend, revise, and surrender positions in front of others doing the same. Disagreement becomes the bond instead of the wedge. No credential is needed to begin. Two prepared readers and one good text are enough.
Under the umbrella sit Leizu Academy for tutoring, the Agora and Ohm Dome as free community projects, and Marginalia, essays on the talks attended around the city. The same room with different doors.
Saul Nassau runs Seminar Schools. Fifteen years teaching across six countries. MA in Philosophy from the European Graduate School, where he studied under Žižek and Agamben, after reading Hegel with George di Giovanni at McGill. PhD in Education in progress.
Five community projects grow alongside the tutoring. All free, all open. Dates go out through >open_transmission_ (a public reading doc) when each is ready.
Toronto and online.
Leizu Academy admits by portfolio. Application form below.
Leizu Academy admits students by portfolio. Apply with a portfolio attached and the first session rate runs at fifty percent. Rolling enrollment. No cohorts. The shape of the portfolio is yours to decide. We are looking at how you think and how you work.
A portfolio could include three to fifteen pieces of work you have made in any medium. Essays drawings code builds recordings photographs designs performances. It could include process documentation alongside finished pieces. Sketches drafts notes false starts. It could include a short note beside each piece naming what it is and why you made it. It could include one short essay on why Leizu and why now. It could include a description of what you are working on currently or want to work on. It could include a letter from a teacher who knows your work. None of these are required. The synthesis is drawn from how MIT Maker Portfolio asks for project writeups with up to twenty supporting documents how RISD asks for twelve to twenty examples of recent work in any medium how Deep Springs College asks essays designed to bring an applicant to a stop for an hour or two and how Pioneer accepts any project from any field. Pick the form that lets your work speak.
Sources for the portfolio synthesis above. MIT Admissions creative portfolios. RISD first-year application. Deep Springs College admissions. Pioneer.