In early June of every year, students around the United States sigh in relief at the end of the school year. No longer trapped by stuffy classrooms and long extracurriculars, students have time to enjoy summer with their friends and family. But this summer is not a full vacation. Many students are required to prepare for their classes in the next year by completing at home summer projects in a variety of subjects. In deciding the design of such projects, summer projects should be teacher-designed in order to instill discipline among the children and improve the quality of education during the school year; while some may argue students will be more engaged if they can design the summer projects themselves, the freedom received by creating one's own project could actually leave students disinterested with a topic mattter they know little about.

Receiving teacher designed projects, and not giving students the freedom to design their own, will instill discipline among the children that is needed to be successful in the coming year. While it may be unfair to impose a project only decided by teachers, this unfairness is consistent with the method of which projects and tests are given out during the school year. A student who expects student autonomy in an advanced class with a lot of content may be fustrated and even resentful towards a teacher who tries to implement teacher-designed projects during the school year. Thus, students may not be disciplined enough to listen to their teachers and do what is expect of them if they have such a different mode of learning during the school year. Furthermore, it is especially important students understand and get used to the rigor of advanced classes such as Duel Enrollment and Advanced Placement classes, which put high demands on the students from the beginning to the end of a year. Difficult classes, like Advanced Placement, are often required to give out several tests and projects of a specific regulation or design, as per the exam that students are expected to take at the end of the year. Failing to model the specific design expected in the advanaced class would do a diservice to the students who are taking end of year exams, and may even lead to lower scores.

Most importantly, giving teachers control over summer project ensures that they know exactly how educated each student is on the subject matter and will not have to waste time repeating material that could have been taught during the summer. Student-designed summer projects will often veer towards a student studying a topic of their own choice; thus, their peformance on such a project will only give insight on their capabilities in that subject and leave the teacher clueless as to what else the student may or may not know. For example, a student-designed summer project in calculus may have the student practice and research taking a derivative. A teacher will be able to judge this student's abiity in differentiation. However, the teacher will have no understaning of the student's ability to integrate or sum series, which are two equally crucial concepts of calculus. By relying on the student to design his summer project and, by extension, his preparation for a class, the teacher will be ill informed on the actual strengths and weaknesses of his or her students. This will have adverse effects on the quality of education during the school year, because the teacher may waste time teaching concepts students need no help in and failing to spend more effort teaching concepts students overwhelmingly struggle in understanding. The quality of education may suffer in other areas as well if students were to design their summer projects. Since elementary school, I remember many teachers complaining about how summer is when students' education goes down the drain. Without the presence of teacher instruction or even projects to complete, students often fail to retain information of the previous school year. Consequentially, teachers gripe, for good reason, that they spend the first quarter of the new year reteaching old information. With teacher control over summer projects, students will be forced to renegage witth all the material the teacher expects them to know before returning to school. Students will not have such a large gap of instruction during the summer and, thus, will be able to learn more information at a deeper level during the school year, improving the quality of their education as a whole.

Others may argue that giving students autonomy over their summer projects will make them more engaged with the material for the school year, but too much freedom may lead to a lack of understanding and excerbate disinterest with the subject matter. A student required to make a project about introduction to world history will probably not know much about the subject during the summer; thus, he or she will be more likely to feel lost and anxious about having to create such project. The student may only research the topics he or she already understands, say American history, and neglect researching the roman empire or hundred years war that will make up most of the material in the class. Thus, the student has not grown in interest for the class, but has remained stagnant in both understanding and engagement with the new material of the year. Also, he or she may feel overwhelmed and cheat or simply turn in a project of bad quality in response to such a demanding project.

Instead of fostering engagement, throwing students into the deep end of a class with little teacher instruction may actually scare students from taking the class in the coming year.

Teacher-designed summer projects will provide the school the opporutunity to prepare students for their best chance of success in advanced classes and to teach students more information at a deeper level. These projects are schools' best hope in ensuring students do not sweat out all their knowledge in the summer heat.