Summer projects can be a helpful tool for both teachers and students to ensure that students will be ready for the next school year and not forget what they learned the previous year. Summer projects should be enriching, creative, and fun for students. While a student-designed project may be creative and fun, it would most likely lack the enrichment component which is the whole point of having summer projects. Ultimately, teachers know better than students how to prepare for the upcoming school year, which is why these summer projects should be teacher-designed rather than student-designed.

Student-designed projects may sound like a good idea at first, but students would not be able to create a project that would prepare themselves well enough for the next year; at least not the same way teachers can. Students are already unmotivated to do any summer homework let alone projects. However, there is definitely an appeal to creating your own projects, which would help motivate students to complete and do a good job with the project. Most likely though, if students were given free reign to design their summer project themselves, they would take advantage of the opportunity and make a project that is too easy and in the end, unhelpful. This outcome would be even worse than just doing a teacher-designed project which would actually help students.

Teachers know exactly how to prepare students for the next year, so although their project may be harder and not as fun, it would pay off in the long run and help students develop important skills they would need for the next year. Because the goal of summer projects is to make sure students are learning over break, teachers tend to focus too much on the content of the project and often do not make the project creative or fun. Often times, a teacher-designed summer project will be to read a book, analyze it, and write an essay about it. These types of projects are not fun for students, and the result would be a clear lack of effort from the student. I myself have experienced this, and know firsthand that students need to be interested in the project to ensure quality work. In order to avoid this and cater to students creativity, teachers should design multiple projects for students to choose from incorporating various skills such as art, writing, or research. This way, students have a choice and can pick whichever project they would have the most fun doing.

Ultimately, teachers know what they are doing better than students, and can make summer projects fun for the student while also helping them continue learning for the next year. Teachers can always get feedback from students and implement new ideas on how to improve the same project to make it better for the next year, whereas students would not be able to do this. With having more experience and knowledge, it is best that the design of summer projects be left to the teachers.