Many schools in America assign summer assignments so the students will continue to learn throughout their summer break. Now this has people starting to question whether the assignment should be designed by the students or by the teacher. Which would be more beneficial to the students work ethic in the classroom for the upcoming year? While teachers have the experience and abilities to create the summer assignments, the projects should be designed by the students because the they would not feel as pressured or stressed and the students would base the project around what they need to learn.

To begin with, students designing their summer assignments would put less stress and pressure onto the student. The students being able to choose the amount of work they do over summer break will help the students feel better about the work and not feel as stressed about turning it in. While learning in school is a requirement and need for children and teenagers, it puts a lot of pressure onto the students which is harmful to the students well-being and mental health. During the summer, students should not have to worry about more work to get done by a certain due date. Instead, they should only be worried about their mental health and taking a well deserved break. After going to school for about nine months with very short breaks, students deserve to be able to sit back and relax for a little but instead they get bombarded by test graded projects from the school. Most of the time, students are unaware of the assignments or do not understand what they are supposed to be doing so they just do not turn in an assignment at all which results in the student starting the school year off with poor grades. It is important and beneficial for students to do these projects but the teacher-designed ones often become too much for a student to handle, especially with numerous ones from different teachers. The school should not put more stress onto their students by giving them projects that can lower their grade at the very beginning of a new school year.

Another reason summer assignments should be student-designed is because the students would focus the project more around what they need to learn. Most summer assignments are based on subjects the student has already learned, when the projects should be teaching them about what they are going to learn within the new class. If the summer assignments were student-designed, they would dig further into the new subject rather than working on items that they have already learned. It would be beneficial to the students if the work was more centered around what is going to be taught within the next school year. The students would also center the work around what feels most comfortable to them. Most teachers who give summer assignments do not think about what the kid may or may not be able to do. Meanwhile, students would rather work on items that they are able to do by themselves without any outside help. Some may say that the students would just give themselves less work resulting in them being lazy and not learning anything over their break and that the students would be unaware of the curriculum that they would be learning within the upcoming year so they would have no clue about what to focus their summer assignment on. While the students would give less work to themselves, it would be more beneficial to their learning experience and well-being. Also their teachers could provide a copy of the curriculum to the students so they would know what to base their project on.

In conclusion, teachers do an outstanding job at teaching during the school year but students should be able to design their own summer assignments. Students should able to create their own assignments because it would help the student not feel as stressed or pressured over their break. It would also be beneficial to their learning process because they would focus more on what they need to learn versus what has already been taught.