Every year when summer comes around, teachers are handing out projects to do over the three short months students are given. It's exhausting to the students; they've just been through almost a year of instruction and following directions. There needs to be a break from traditional education, but the answer isn't as simple as just eliminating summer projects. If a school requires a summer project, it needs to be student directed with very minimal guidelines, and give the students a chance to breathe free of the weight of a teacher's rules of fair-play. Traditional teacher-led projects stunt the readers growth, force students to work for a rubric, and overall numb the experience of education.

Teachers are limiting their students with their inability to provide any meaningful work. Take for example the prompt for this essay. It is a shallow, somewhat ambiguous question that was designed with the sole purpose of assessing a student's ability to write. Teachers simply aren't trying to provide meaningful work, or they don't actually know how to. Regardless, giving students free range to do as they please on a summer project will eliminate the guessing game. Instead of teachers trying to accommodate an entire class of kids' interests, students will pursue whatever interests them with a passion. This overall would lead to more growth for the students.

Similarly, giving students the opprotunity to do a student-designed project would eliminate students' tendency to work for a grade. In reality, most students simply do the bare minimum of what they need to do to attain a grade they feel satisfied with. Nobody is going above and beyond the rubric guidelines on a topic they have minimal interest in. This is horrible for students, and it leads to lousy work. It is similar to taking a beautiful maple tree, and cutting it down into a small piece of wood desinged with a simple purpose. Rubrics on teacher-designed projects are holding kids back.

These issues combined make education boring, repetitive and damaging to mental health. Any smart person can look at American education and see it needs reform. An easy way to start it would be allowing the students to design a summer project, and see how much the work improves when students are given freedom. There would be in increase in work output, because it is much easier for kids to work on something that actually interests them. Students will stop doing lackluster work because they will no longer be bored.