Should summer projects be teacher or student-designed? Some schools have summer projects to make sure the students are still learning over their summer break, but this sparks a question: should these projects be teacher-designed or student-designed? While most people will say that these should be student-designed projects, teacher-designed projects are the much better option because the teacher can base them off of materials for the following school year and teachers have more experience making projects than students.

Teacher-designed summer projects for students is a much better option than to let the students design them themselves. The teachers know in better detail what the student will be learning about once they get back into school after summer break. For example, a student who just finished geometry and who is going into Algebra II is going to have to learn a whole new skill-set during that course, and the Algebra II teachers can design a project around an introduction to all of the new material to be taught during the new year. Another example is in the science department. Most students will take chemistry one year, then physics the next year. These two courses have very little in common and is a big leap in material to learn. If the physics department designs a project to introduce the rising physics students into physics so they don't come into class completely unprepared, it would allow for a much more efficient school year.

Another reason teacher-designed summer projects are better than student-designed projects is experience. Teachers have been making projects for students their entire careers, so they know the little things that can make a project more engaging and fun for the student. For instance, a physics teacher can give an engaging lesson on forces by putting together typical around-the-house items and make a lab that any student can reproduce and learn about physics. Another example of this would be for a chemistry project. The chemistry department can create a project where students can use easily accessible chemicals they can find in their home to produce some safe and easy chemical reactions to help build their knowledge of the way chemistry works.

Allowing students to design their own projects during the summer is not as good of an idea as allowing the teachers to design the projects. Allowing the students to design the projects may result in the students designing something easy and not very educational that they could finish in just a few minutes. Allowing the more experienced teachers to design these summer projects would be a lot more efficient due to their knowledge of the new material being learned, and their experience over their career designing projects for the students to complete.

So, should summer projects be student-designed or teacher-designed? While yes, most people believe that allowing the students to design their own projects for the summer is a better idea, allowing the teachers to design these projects is a much safer and better idea because they know the new material to be learned by the students, and they have more experience designing projects.