W

inter is made to work hard. Summer is made to party hard.

This quote from Riccardo, the protagonist of the Italian movie

You are doing it right, is the perfect summary of what students think when school come to an end and in front of them are just two complete months of hot sun and fun. Of course this is not completely true; the goals one achieved during the school year are not eternal and docents know it. Assuming this, is right to think that they want to help us keep track of what have been done in the year during our holidays.

For a better learning experience, summer projects should be designed by teachers because it will be easier for students, it will make work faster for the teacher and the projects can be effective once the students are back to school.

Some may argue that teacher-designed projects not always reflect ones interests and may result in an harder work because of that. For example in the book

Every exquisite thing, the main character struggle in her history class because of assignments that do not touch her interests, but she find herself doing great with her Literature teacher that leave her more freedom of choice. In the same way some people may feel that their personal opinions and interests are left aside because of designed project, nevertheless there are other viewpoint to take in consideration.

To begin with, is right to think that summer breaks are made to spend time with family and friends, discover and travel or simply relax after a year of hard work. Students are more likely to complete a task quicker and better if this is assigned and designed by teachers. For example, Aristotle, the famous Greek philosopher, said that his words are the mean that led people to knowledge and without this mean his followers would be lost and left in ignorance. In the same way a teacher's job is leading students to knowledge and, to use a parallelism with Aristotle, projects are the mean by which they (the teachers) can help teenagers.

In addition, teachers will not have the problem of reviewing dozens, if not hundreds, of different projects. From my personal experience of teacher assistant in my school back in Italy, I can say that there is nothing longer than analyzing and correcting other people' s job; even more if always different. If my teacher had the possibility to design the same project for the whole class, our review would have last two days instead of two weeks.

Finally, teacher-designed work have been shown to be more effective. A survey, conducted by the Italian Minister of Instruction proved that summer projects are essential for students, but are more effective in cases where the topic and the design where chosen by the teacher. This is because with a guidance and clear instructions students could focus more on the content and avoid wasting time over subjects not related to the work. For these reasons it's essential to underline the importance of teachers' help not only during the months in school, but through the whole year.

Like a caring mother, she took me under her wing and taught me everything she knew wrote the author of

Turtles always come back referring to the help that an English teacher gave to a student of her struggling after the separation of his parents. It can sound like an Utopia, but teachers care about us and if they want us to achieve our goals they will help us, and themselves, with effective projects.