Students and teachers tend to have quite a bit of differences. Students feel as If teachers just don't understand them, and I'm sure it's likewise for teachers as well. One of our biggest misunderstandings is summer reading projects. Summer for students is a time of bright sunny days, water parks, and going out for ice cream with friends. For teachers on the other hand, they view it as the time where students lose the eagerness to learn and information they've taught them. I believe that summer reading projects should be student-designed because It will persuade us students to continue learning and make summer reading projects much more enjoyable.

To begin, student-designed summer reading projects will better persuade us students to continue our learning over the break. Me being a student myself, I can vouch for not wanting to do the summer reading project for the simple fact that I feel as if teachers don't take into account that this is a break to enjoy ourselves during the summer. So, I would always wait till the last week of summer to rush and complete it. Almost every time resulting in my project being poorly done. Now If a student, like me, who better understands this were to design the project, I believe he or she would have a better approach because they'll work around this and seek a middle ground. Doing things such as extending the due date, decreasing the amount work required, or maybe even having students pick a book of their choice that they find interesting. Now I can understand how some people could say that having these projects be student-designed would just make the work easier; in which, negatively effecting it by shying away from the core purpose of the project, assuring students keep learning over break. I would have to disagree with this because not only would this enhance the learning capabilities within the project, but it would eliminate students fear of the thought of projects during summer break as a whole.

To further prove my point, student led summer reading projects could actually make doing it enjoyable and exciting. lets be honest, summer reading projects aren't fun in any sense. When students think of reading during the summer an instant look of disgust can be pictured upon their faces. They tend to strip away the thought of finally getting time to sit back and rest from the what seems like a never ending road of stress school brings. To give an example of the feeling it brings, say that you've come home from a long day at work and your totally exhausted. You finally start to approach your nice, comfortable bed then suddenly out of the blue, you get a telephone call saying they need you to come back in to work for a little longer. Imagine the amounts of frustration and sorrow that that would cause. I feel that this directly relates to students being forced to do summer reading projects that certainly isn't catered around their happiness. This can easily be avoided though by having these projects be student led because, like I stated before, students have a better understand of the feeling of students. So they'll take much better action when designing these projects making it more appealing to students. With doing things as simple as making the project eligible to be done as a group, or even having part of the project require you to do a fun summer activity. To combat this, someone may say that having the project include something enjoyable and interesting will cause students to feel as if they don't have to do it. I believe this to be immensely false, and I think that having the project attempt to strike students interest will have the total opposite effect; therefore, increasing the likelihood of students to do it.

To wrap this up, having summer reading projects be student-designed has many positives that greatly outshine the negatives. Teachers have for far too long designed these projects, and I think now is the time for a change. Rather than helping students continue their learning outside of school these projects causes students to neglect it even more. Even at having students design them I believe long strides will still be required to correctly revamp summer reading projects, but then I also believe that it is definitely a step in the right direction.