On an uneventful summer morning, I sat on my couch without having the intention to do anything; it was over one-hundred degrees outside, and my usual rounds of video games had gotten stale. My summer project, which I have been ignoring since summer break started, began taunting me from across the room. "What does it mean by 'Student-Designed Summer Project'? It would have been better if the teacher just gave us a pre-planned project," I pondered. Teachers should assign summer projects with the intention of creating the rubric and grading them to a curriculum; this ensures that summer projects promote learning, stay structured, and provide educational overlap.

When schools require student to complete projects over the summer, they do this with the intention that it will promote learning outside of school; this prevents complacency and maintains a steady work ethic in students. I exemplify this because although I procrastinate until the last week of summer to complete my project, the sudden workload prepares me for the assignments that school will begin to assign when summer break ends. The project, designed by teachers, ensures that, as a student, I will be able to learn the intended learning target and apply it in the classroom and other learning environments. Although it can be argued that summer projects have no real application to the learning process, that reasoning, however, is flawed. This can be proved by the knowledge that summer projects are a valuable lesson that even without school, there will always be work that has to be done throughout the year, regardless of the season.

More often than not, teachers plan their classes and projects ahead of time to ensure that everything is structured properly which will allow teaching and curriculum standards to be met with ease. More often than not, summer projects that teachers design will always have a solid learning and work structure. However, in the case of student designed summer projects, there will be great flaws in the process of completing their projects. Similarly to how structure is vital to a project, it is also vital for building and construction. In the 1980s various railways in the mountain were built on uneven and crumbling ground. Furthermore, upon having a weak base, the supports, which were made of wood at the time, couldn't handle the trains traveling with a full load of coal and raw materials. Although the argument is weak, some may say that projects can be completed without proper structure. More often than not, designing and completing a project without a properly throughout structure can lead to confusion and the inability to complete said project. Furthermore, projects are required to be structured properly to full test the capabilities of the student.

Learning will always use co-requisite and pre-requisite knowledge in a process known as educational overlap; teacher designed summer projects are a perfect example of the various applications educational overlap can be used for. Throughout elementary school, I have been assigned summer reading projects made by the teacher that were to be turned in on the first day of school after break. I used skills that I learned in class before summer break and applied the skills that I had learned in the comprehension portion of that project to my English classes throughout the years. Some may say that teacher based summer projects don't provide educational overlap because during the summer break, not all kids may remember the lessons taught in school. However, this can be refuted with the fact that teachers design the summer projects to reinforce previously taught lessons and apply new ways of comprehension that students will be able to understand and apply in educational situations.

The ability to recall previously learned knowledge prior to summer break, maintain a structured learning path, and the ability to learn new knowledge are skills obtained and mastered through summer projects designed by teachers. By being able to complete a project made by a teacher, away from a learning environment, students can take their abilities to be able to continue learning. Furthermore, students can hope to use their skills in out-of-school applications such as careers that require hard work and dedication.