Many students and teachers argue over the question of whether or not students should be able to design their own summer break projects. There are mixed answers over the quality of the work, the amount of creativity that should be allowed in the school building, and how well this ensures students learn the material. Teacher led projects, however, take away all of the potential positive effects associated with those concerns. Summer projects should be student designed to increase creativity in students, make sure students know their classroom material well, and increase the quality and student interest of these projects.

Summer projects should be student designed to boost creativity in students. When a teacher designs a project, it takes away the opportunity for the student to design and create their own representation of the assignment. When students get to choose their methodology of presentation, there are often more creative outcomes. For example, in an AP Government class at Generic_School, the students were given the opportunity to create a project on one of the departments of Congress. This led to numerous different types of projects: songs, raps, creative videos, etc. Had the teacher mandated they all do a PowerPoint (or other mode of presentation), the students would not have had nearly as much fun or been as informative in their projects. School should be about learning, but there should also be an element of creativity and expressing oneself in the classroom. Letting students design their own projects leads to much more creativity and student interest in the classroom.

An additional reason that summer projects should be student designed are to ensure student comprehension of the topic. When a student has to generate their own mode of presentation, this ensures that they fully understand the classroom material, because the expectation in student designed projects is that students have to not only understand the material, but know it well enough that they can pick an appropriate way to present it to their peers. In the AP Government class, when the students were able to present their own projects to the class, many students agreed that they learned the material better than they would have if they had just done a generic presentation. It is common knowledge that when someone knows something really well, that they can teach it, and this kind of presentation enables the student to show exactly how much they know. Student designed projects make sure that students know their class information very well, and can teach it to their peers as a result.

Some might argue that having a teacher designed project is better because when students are given the freedom to do their own project, the quality will not be as high. This, however, is not the case; although there are always counterexamples, the vast majority of students put more work into their presentation when given the opportunity to choose what it looks like. Referring back to the AP Government class, classroom presentations where students had the liberty to present how they chose were always of higher quality than projects where the teacher chose the mode of presenting. This is due to lack of interest in students; if a student is not interested in their project, they will not put as much effort while when students are given a creative outlet, they tend to put more of themselves into their work. Teacher designed projects are not the better of the two options due to their lack of freedom and decreased quality of work as a result.

Summer projects should be student designed to boost creativity, ensure student comprehension, and increase the quality of their projects. When students are given the freedom to express themselves, it improves the learning environment and encourages more students to come to school. Teachers should be able to give their students more freedom in assignments such as summer projects.