After almost 10 months of school routines and class schedules, there looms a giant window of time between each school year where the leisure of vacations, adventures, and relaxation takes place. However, within that same time period, there is often an educational cost. A pressing concern about summer is of the fact that there lies a long period where students do not acquire new knowledge, meaning that students remain mentally static for months on end. Summer projects are often assigned by teachers in order to combat this problem, but that alone does not directly address the issue. There also comes the question of whether or not these projects should be designed by teachers or students. The best way to conduct summer projects is to make summer projects teacher-designed since teacher-designed summer projects would show students what they need to include in their project, would be easier for teachers to grade, and would allow teachers to maximize their students' education.

Conversely, others may argue that student-designed summer projects are preferable because there would be more room for creativity. For example, if students are assigned a book report and one student wants to complete the assignment in the form of a presentation instead, one may struggle to complete the assignment because he/she is not able to express his/her ideas in a way that is more comfortable to him/her. While it is true that such a scenario may occur, this can be avoided if teachers provided general standards as to what the project should include to allow for creativity. In doing so, students would be provided with both creativity and structure. Therefore, there is no need for teachers to play a secondary role in the design of summer projects.

Firstly, teacher-designed summer projects show students what needs to be included in the project, which allows students to understand what a well-done project generally consists of. For example, if a teacher assigns a science project without a rubric, students would not know if they would need to include their list of materials, how specific the procedure should be, or whether to include a short report of the results instead of a long conclusion paragraph; all of which are key aspects of the assigned project. As a result, the class's grade would be at risk because there are no guidelines given by the teacher to more specifically show what a well-conducted project would generally look like. In addition, without the rubric, the class would not know how much of their time should be dedicated to which parts of the assignment because it would not know which aspects of the project are most integral to its quality, meaning that students may end up wasting their time on a relatively insignificant part of the project. Without any form of teacher guidelines, projects would create a unnecessary source of stress for students, which is antithetical to conducive learning.

Secondly, teacher-designed summer projects would be easier for teachers to grade because there would be consistent standards that teachers are looking for when grading a project. For example, when a teacher assigns a book report with a clear rubric, the teacher knows what he/she is specifically looking for such as whether or not the student included the setting of the story, whether or not the student included the initiating event which sparked the central conflict of the story, and what that central conflict is. That way, teachers can easily give fair judgment for each assignment. As a result, the rubric saves a lot of time for teachers because instead of teachers repeatedly and meticulously looking at each essay to see if they graded each one fairly, they can simply refer to the rubric.

Therefore, without definitive teacher guidelines, projects would be extremely stressful and difficult for teachers to grade since the grade would be less likely to reflect the actual quality of the project itself.

Thirdly, teacher-designed summer projects would allow teachers to maximize their students' education because the guidelines provided would provide students with a basis of how they can best utilize their knowledge. For example, if a teacher assigns a history report on a significant historical event and the people involved, the rubric would convey which pieces of information would be most important to the project and by extension, most relevant to the event. In doing so, students would also learn many of the important aspects of said historical event such as why it happened and who caused it, which would add to their historical knowledge and demonstrate how to best learn about history. Since teachers are professional educators, their guidance is very important for students and they help instill methods that are most conducive to learning. Additionally, since summer is a two-month block in which students are separated from a school environment, rubrics remind students how to find information and how to utilize it much like school would.

To conclude, teacher-designed summer projects are more beneficial because they save both students and teachers a world of stress by serving as a guide to what projects should encompass and how projects should be graded. By serving as a guide for students, students are able to maximize their education by understanding the importance of the information they are receiving in terms of how it should be integrated into the project. By serving as a guide for teachers, teachers are able to fairly assess the quality of each project. Since such a type of project can also allow for creativity by adopting more general standards, teacher-designed projects can still be both creative and structured. Therefore, teacher-designed summer projects serve as the best continuation for students' education.