Summer break serves primarily as a time for relaxation and rest from the busy school schedule for both students and teachers. It is, however, important that students continue to learn over their vacation and enter the school year prapared and ready to succeed in their classes. In most cases, teachers will assign summer assignments like summer readings or research papers that provide students with a baseline preparedness in skills necessary for the class. Some believe these summer assignments should be created by students, believing that it will help them exercise their creativity as well as develop their own learning style. While a student-designed experience has its benefits, it is still more advantageous for teachers to create these summer assignments as it ensures all students enter the year with the same level of preparedness, allows teachers to better plan the year's curriculum and pace, and helps train certain skills necessary to succeed in the class.

Student-designed summer projects claim to be beneficial as they allow students freedom in choosing the topics students study and the type of work they prefer to do, allowing them to be more invested in their work as well as boosting productivity and creativity. This feature, however, proves to be more harmful to a student than helpful as it reults in students starting the year with vastly different levels of understanding. When students enter the year at different levels of understanding, the teacher has to spend a considerable amount of time at the beginning of the year making sure their students are caught up to the same place, wasting both the teacher's time as well as the time of students who are more prepared. This is avoided with teacher-designed summer assignments, as teachers will provide the same topic and type of work, allowing the students to enter the year at the same level of preparedness.

Another beneficial feature of teacher-designed summer assignments is that it allows the teacher to plan and pace the year's curriculum. This is possible because a teacher, when designing the year's lesson plan, will incorporate the summer assignments into it, usually using it as a segway into the year's curriculum. When students design their summer assignments, however, they will likely focus on different subjects picking a topic they're interested in rather than one that will lay the ground work for the upcoming year. This will result in the teachers having to spend extra time at the beginning of the year introducing certain topics and skills that should have been developed over the summer. In turn, this will cause teachers to rush towards the end of the year in attempts to cram all remaining information into their lessons, resulting in many areas being skipped over or barely taught.

Lastly, teacher-designed summer assignments are more beneficial than student-designed ones as they help train specific skills that will be useful in the class. When students design summer assignments, they will tend to chose topics and formats that fit their interests and skillset. While this helps to boost the student's productivity and creativity, it fails to equip them with the necessary tools to succed. Teacher-designed summer assignments, however, work to develop the skills essential to success in the class as well as an understanding of the course's themes. Entering the school year with a basic understanding of a class' essential skills to succeed will benefit a student much more than if they desgigned work that fortified their preexisting skills. This is especially important for advanced placement and dual enrolment classes, both of wich move at a rapid pace and will not spend extra time fortifiying skills that could have been developed over the summer, such as writing, research, analysis, etc.

While student-designed summer programs prove effective at stimulating student creativity and productivity, teacher-designed assingments are still superior at preparing the student for the upcoming school year. They provide a standard level of preparedness for students, ensuring that they enter a level playing field instead of having some students be far more prepared than others. Also, it allows for a teacher to plan their curriculum and pace it in a way that ensures no student feels rushed or left behind whil still teaching the information adequately. Most importantly, it allows students to develop certain skills that will set them up for success, especially in fast paced classes that wont spend extra time to fortify these skills. With all this in mind, it's clear that, to better prepare the students for the upcoming school year, tachers should be responsible for designing summer work assignments as they know how to prepare students best, based off the course and sklls it requires.