Summer projects. Although many students despise summer projects, there are schools that require students to complete summer projects for the purpose of continuing education during the break to keep the student mind active. Some schools have to decide between student-designed projects or teacher-designed projects to assign to students over break. The schools that require summer projects to assure that students continue to learn during summer break should assign student-designed projects because students are more likely to complete them and they have a better final product than if the project was to be designed by a teacher.

If the summer projects were to be student-designed, students would be much more likely to fully complete the project over the course of the whole break rather than last minute. In the last school year, right as summer break was ending, my companions and I discussed summer projects that we had for various classes. What I came to learn was that many had not gotten started and simply did not intend on completing them until the very last week before they were due;the projects had been made by teachers. The objective of a summer assignment is to do it in incriments throughout the break to ensure that the mind is still learning and still active throughout the break. The problem with many summer projects that are teacher-designed is that many students just simply don't complete them or only partially complete them because they do not veiw the project as engagin or interesting. Speaking to Ted, one of my close friends, he explained to me that he did not care about the summer project and just did it to get the grade. When the projects are teacher-designed, students mostly view them as a boring and unengaging. A student is better able to engage other students because they understand what it means to be a student. This is because students have a empathetic knowledge towards other students that teachers don't posess. When students design those summer projects they are able to use that knowledge to design more engaging and interesting projects than teachers.

Another reason that summer projects should be student-designed is that there would be more detailed and more comprehensive final projects than if they were teacher-designed. There have been a few times that I have been able to complete student-designed projects in school. As a result, my finished product was far better planned and much more elaborate than a similar completed project that was designed by a teacher. When a student gets to design a project, the students who work on that project are actually interested in what they are doing since the project has been designed by someone who understands thier interests. When a student is completing a project that they are interested in, they use a completly different work ethic and put passion into the project rather than doing a project which bores them. A similar thing happens in the workplace when individuals complete a task they are not interested in; they get a diminished output and the same principle applies here. Therefore student-designed projects have a better output than a teacher-designed project.

Some may argue the summer project should be teacher-designed because teachers are able to design better projects than students. Any project no matter who it is designed by has to follow a rubric making that argument irrelevant since both of the projects end up following the same guidlines.

Even in the case of the project being better designed by a teacher, the counter-arguement is still incorrect because the teacher-designed project does not end up actually acomplishing the goal of having the students keep learning throughout summer break; the student-designed project does accomplish that goal, by students completing them over the whole break. The counter-argument can even be harmful to the students because they are much more likely to do teacher-designed projects last minute due to lack of interest; when they do that, students end up being really stressed right before they enter school. That can defeat the whole purpose of a break because even having relaxed for all of break, they enter school with a stressful attitude. It is better to have student-designed projects where students are interested in the project and continue to learn throughout summer break then the antithesis of it, where they do it in the end and enter school stressed, not having accomplished the purpose of the project.

All things considered, summer projects that are assigned by certain schools should be student-designed instead of teacher-designed because having them be student-designed ensures that the project will be completed througout the entirety of the break fufilling its purpose and students will have a better final output due to increased interest in the subject matter. When the project is designed by a student, the people completing the project are far more likley to pace themselves and complete it in incriments due to interest in the project. This also ensures that the student will put a greater effort into the project; as a result, the final project they submit will be a more comprehensive product due to project having its own personality and having more individualism than if every student was assigned the same-old project that was designed by a teacher. A counter-argument may be presented that a teacher-designed project will surpass a student-designed project because teachers design better projects. That argument fails when it is considered that a teacher based project defeats the pupose of having a summer project in the first place because students tend to complete those types of project last minute having a diminished output. Then, coming into the new school year stressed and not coming in refreshed, which is the purpose of summer break. In the end, why design a project in the first place, when the way that project is designed defeats the purpose of that project?