Encourage accountability and independence through smaller things first, like a summer assignment. Although some may believe otherwise, summer projects should be designed by the students because it will show the teachers what the students already know and are well-prepared on and it will relieve the anxiety students may experience throughout the summertime.

Teachers have to follow a curriculum to teach by, there are certain points that teachers have to hit, especially the beginning of the year review where the summer projects come in handy. The point of the project is to make sure those key points stay drilled inside our heads. However, those summer projects are oftentimes extremely structured and can be challenging for a lot of students. Students should design their own, so instead of receiving no paper at all, teachers will have a project that shows everything that a student is comfortable self-assessing on. My Spanish teacher, Mrs. Generic_Name, had us design our own quizzes one time where she provided different types of quizzes we could give ourselves and all we had to do was fill in the blanks by choosing the vocabulary words we want to be tested on. Almost everyone made their own and the grades were obviously outstanding. I remember those vocabulary words best now since it was exercised the way I thought I would be able to remember it by. Some may argue that students may not take it seriously and use the freedom as an easy A. While understandable, that statement is false because the point of self-assigning is less about the grades and more about what the teacher can do to help teach the curriculum the best that they can. The students show what they took best out of the lesson, and then the teacher takes tries to make it better. It benefits both the students and the teachers.

Summer break is supposed to be a break. Having a long-term, obligatory assignment can really ruin summer break for the students if they think a project will be too time consuming or challenging. No one wants to have to take time out of their break just to get a boring project done and over with. My best friend, Generic_Name, goes to a school where students must choose one book out of a list of books that the county selected on and then do a report on it. She was supposed to go to Hawaii last summer, but she did not enjoy it because she spent the entire time trying to finish a book she was never interested in, and a project that was so vaguely put together that she had no real idea on what she was doing. Some would say that there other times she could have done that report and maybe put some time aside to give her the ability to really sit down and read the book. However, this was a long-term assignment with requirements she could not have reached given the very limited time she could have on her own. Her parents planned activities from the early mornings to the late hours of the night. It is not just about time management. How could she have attempted to balance anything when she had no time in the first place? This is not just Generic_Name having that problem, most other students have this problem as well.

Giving the students an option to design projects themselves would mean that more students would want to participate more since they would have creative control over what they want to work on. The probability of making someone do something they do not feel like doing is already pretty low, especially when it is something they could get away with not doing. My friend, Generic_Name took a theater class for an art credit at first, but eventually grew a genuine interest in acting. Every end of the quarter, they would have to perform a monologue worth a test grade. Naturally, everyone knew that they had to avoid any piece of media that they liked and had the teacher choose it for them. Generic_Name enjoyed the class until it became more and more controlling, so eventually he just gave up on it. It was an elective class, and even that made multiple students lose interest, even those who did have an affinity for the arts. Some may argue that it is necessary sometimes to do work that we do not want to do. However, the summer project still will remain as an "option" as long as we keep making it like a bothersome task instead of a tool to help the teachers teach and the students learn.

Nowadays, teachers are beginning to let students have more freedom when it comes down to tasks like homework, but then the year ends and everything we learned either stay in our heads or goes out the window. The summer projects should be a tool to help everyone and not just the teachers or so keep our brains "working" throughout the summertime. Finding out certain strengths between the students can help gather what other information other students have issues with. Giving students the ability to design our own projects help give ourselves a sense of what we know best. Teachers are not going to be there to hold our hands our entire lives, and as far as I know it, we are going to be students for the rest of our lives. So why not take the reigns and work the way we all feel works best. There is not just one type of learning, there is a myriad. Everyone goes at their own pace, and it is only fair to respect that.