Your emerging syllabus (your academic work) starts where you are with the knowledge you already have and follows the natural brain process, the order of events might be different for different people. We suggest to start these events when you are relaxed and ready, you may benefit from writing down your reflections to questions/statements similar to:
What brought you to Evergreen?
Being in Evergreen, what brought you to the Patience summer program?

    - What do you plan to do?
    - How do you plan to do it?
    - What do you plan to learn?
    - What difference will it make?

To better understand our approach to education you may read some aspects of the foundations of our program:
-    it is the praxis (in the Freirian sense) of our own educational philosophy.
-    it is a student-centered learning environment based in Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed, (our learning environment uses Choice Theory)
-    it emphasizes the Evergreen five focii and the expectations of our Evergreen graduates,
-    it follows the brain natural learning function (you learn what you are interested in learning),
-    it puts strong emphasis in developing communication skills and use of instructional technology (for distance learning praxis) we share our  learning during community visiting time (every tuesday, thursday or every other saturday), or via email using our program list or using our web crossing site, and by presenting our projects at the end of our experience.
-    it uses Howard Zinn's A People's History of the US to help us find out more about who we are and why we are what we are,  (search for identity)
-    it uses the Multiple Intelligences Theory (everyone is a learner, everyone is an intellectual),
-    all of us as co-learners are in charge of instruction, curriculum and assessment and our main tool for this is Bloom's Taxonomy,
-    one main group activity is to build community by creating our own covenant and by making together this program the best it could be.

We construct/justify our program process by studying/internalizing (reading, seminaring, creating/delivering workshops, discussing in small/large groups, writing our reflections via email, web crossing, self evaluations, talking during conferences, discussing in study groups... and doing/using) concepts from the following books:
-Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire
-A Peoples History of the United States by Howard Zinn
-Choice Theory by William Glasser
-Intelligence Reframed by Howard Gardner
-The Dancing Wu Li Masters by Gary Zukav
-Ceremony by Silko
-Broad and Alien is the World by Ciro Alegria (travellers to Peru).

Recommended books:

Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire-0826412769
Intelligence Reframed by Martin Gardner-0465026117
A People's History of the U S by Howard Zinn- 0060528370
The Art of Changing the Brain by James E. Zull-1579220541
Native American Testimony-Peter Nabokov- 0140281592
Teaching to Transgress by Bell Hooks-0415908086
Choice Theory by William Glasser- 0060930144
Decolonizing Methodologies by Linda Tuhiwai Smith-1856496244
Natives and Academics by Devon Mihesuah- 0803282435 Genocide of the Mind by Marijo Moore-1560255110
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy by Steven C. Hayes-1572309555
Methodology of the Oppressed by Chela Sandoval-0816627371