Measure to Manage
Updating the Project Ready Curriculum for Modern Youth Needs
The National Urban League’s Project Ready curriculum had not been updated for over 10 years. Originally launched 17 years ago as the Project Ready College Access Curriculum, it aimed to address the academic and personal needs of youth leaders, integrating academic support with critical life skill development and college awareness. The curriculum was guided by the Individual College Development Plan (ICDP) and comprised three major components: Academic Development, Social Development, and College Culture and Awareness. This structure was designed to help 8th through 12th-grade students progress academically, socially, and intellectually, benefiting from cultural enrichment opportunities and developing essential skills for success during and after high school.
HBAM founder Keith F. Miller assembled a team of experts to update and expand the Project Ready curriculum over several months. This team had extensive experience working across various school districts, supporting universities, especially HBCUs, and serving nonprofit and community-based organizations primarily aiding youth of color. They aimed to ensure that the updated curriculum would foster a nuanced understanding of content areas and a fundamental belief in the lived experiences and profound possibilities of youth of color, their families, and their communities.
Name to Change
Reassessing and Revamping the Curriculum
The National Urban League’s primary goal for the Project Ready curriculum is to “expose youth to the many possibilities of higher education and provide them with the skills and pathways to get there.” Our team stayed true to this goal while reviewing the existing Project Ready 2.0 curriculum, tools, and resources provided by NUL. During our assessment, we realized that asking critical questions about the current content would be crucial in guiding future curriculum development. This process led to the creation of specific recommendations that would shape the Project Ready update.
Feel to Heal
Revitalizing the Curriculum for Modern Challenges
Preserving the intentional focus of youth leaders progressing from “Project Ready” to “Getting Ready” and ultimately “Transition Ready,” the updated curriculum, now called Project Ready 3.0, builds upon the strong foundation of past iterations. It addresses the pressing needs of an ever-changing, post-pandemic world, ensuring youth are not only academically prepared but also career-ready and poised to navigate new opportunities.
Our team developed multimodal, culturally-sustaining, and healing-centered lessons for all instruction levels that:
Foster and sustain transformational relationship building between facilitators and youth leaders.
Provide multimodal activities designed to connect youth leaders’ lives to their learning in actionable ways.
Equip youth leaders and facilitators with culturally sustaining, healing-centered tools for naming and processing trauma individually and collectively.
The Project Ready 3.0 curriculum was designed to initiate a pedagogical and instructional conversation, serving as a mutual invitation for practitioners to bring their lived experience, expertise, and commitment to learning. The curriculum and user guide are designed to be done in full, in parts, or customized by affiliate sites, supporting ongoing Community of Practice to implement and sustain the new materials.
Results
The Project Ready 3.0 curriculum provides a robust foundation for leaders and communities, guiding the development of new modules and supplementary material. It demonstrates how the curriculum and user guide can evolve to serve more pedagogical and transformative ends, ensuring youth of color thrive in an ever-changing world.
