School
for
Poetic
Computation
Mathematics is among the most influential and wide-reaching varieties of knowledge, with applications to virtually all branches of science as well as many if not most artistic and humanistic fields, and yet mathematics is also widely despised, in no small part due to elitism and rote approaches to teaching the subject draining it of all originality and joy. This course is an invitation to learners who may have been traumatized by their own mathematics education to begin to change their relationship to mathematics for the better, through varied activities including study of the cross-cultural histories of the discipline, reflection on our past experiences as students, playing games of strategy, listening to music for harmonic and rhythmic structure, and doing old-fashioned math exercises.
This class may be for you if:
Nabil Hassein is a technologist, researcher, and educator who previously worked as a high school math teacher, a software developer, and a freelancer, and is currently a PhD candidate in New York University's Department of Media, Culture, and Communication, writing a dissertation on Arabic-based programming languages and their associated communities. Nabil is an alum of SFPC's previous full time program, and has previously worked for SFPC as a teaching assistant in the critical theory of technology course and co-organizer of Code Ecologies and Mathematics as a Religious Experience, besides previous iterations teaching Learning to Love Mathematics.
they/them, he/him
· website
Margot Armbruster is a poet and SFPC alum in Brooklyn, NY. Margot has worked as a writer, researcher, educator, community organizer, and musician at The Pauli Murray Center for History and Social Justice, the National Humanities Center, Yale University Press, and elsewhere. They currently research higher education at a New York-based media company. Margot’s creative work appears in The Guardian, USA Today, Belt Magazine, and The Adroit Journal, among other outlets. They are interested in music, math, linguistics, conversation, and prayer, and practice each of these in earnest imperfection. Margot earned a B.A. in English and Political Theory at Duke University, where they picked figs and took long autumn walks in the campus gardens.
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· instagram
Our programs are conducted in spoken English with audiovisual materials such as slides, code examples and video. Online programs are held over Zoom.
Please take care and be well. We hope you are comfortable in your housing, living, and working situation in general. Never hesitate to ask us for advice and reach out if you have accessibility requests or need any assistance during your time at SFPC. We will work closely with you towards co-creating the most accommodating learning environment for your needs.
How would you describe your most recent experience in a math classroom?
Applications open until Applications closed on February 5, 2024.
You can expect to hear back from us about the status of your application on February 19, 2024. Please email us at admissions@sfpc.study with any questions you have.
For 10 classes, it costs $1200 + processing fees, for a one-time payment. We also offer payment plans. Participants can schedule weekly or monthly payments of the same amount. First and last payments must be made before the start and end of class. *Processing fees apply for each payment.
SFPC processes all payments via Withfriends and Stripe. Please email admissions@sfpc.study if these payment options don't work for you.
Upon payment, your space in the class will be reserved. We offer scholarships for those who cannot pay full tuition. Read more about scholarships below.
If you can’t pay full tuition, we really still want you to apply. Our application will ask you how much you can pay. We will offer subsidized positions in all of our classes, once each one has enough participants enrolled that we’re able to do so.
We have also started a scholarship fund, and we will be offering additional scholarships as community members redistribute their wealth through SFPC. We direct scholarship funds towards participants who are low-income, Black, Indigenous, racialized, gendered, disabled, Queer, trans, oppressed, historicially excluded and underrepresented.
Right now, tuition is SFPC’s main source of income, and that is a problem. It means that we can only pay teachers, pay for space, and organize programs when participants pay full tuition to attend. Tuition is a huge barrier to entry into the SFPC community, and it disproportionately limits Black participants, indigenous participants, queer and trans participants, and other people who are marginalized, from participating. Scholarships are not a long term solution for us, but in the short and medium term we hope to offer them more while we work towards transforming SFPC’s financial model.
For SFPC to be the kind of place the community has always meant it to be, it needs to become a platform for wealth redistribution. If you are a former participant, prospective participant, or friend of the school, and you have the financial privilege to do so, please donate generously. There is enough wealth in this community to make sure no one is ever rejected because of their inability to pay, and becoming that school will make SFPC the impactful, imaginative, transformative center of poetry and justice that we know it can be.
Interested in more learning opportunities at the School for Poetic Computation? Join our newsletter to stay up to date on future sessions and events, and follow us on Instagram and Twitter. Support our programming through scholarships. Get in touch over email.
