The last day of school is a day most students are eager to reach. For three months of the year, things like waking up early, studying, and homework aren't daily stressers. However, some teachers will assign summer projects to assure that their students continue their learning over the break, and that they are adequately prepared for the class. These assignments are not nearly as burdensome as many assigned during the school year, and though most students dread the additional piece of work, summer enrichment projects are overall beneficial to a students education. Required summer enrichment projects should be designed by teachers because teachers know the class curriculum best, take the material seriously, and can use the project as a way to familiarize the future students with the teacher's preferred assigment style.

Most classes that require extra preparation in the summer to keep up scholarly habits and skills are generally more advanced courses. Often times in my experience, the summer assignment is simply review of skills that have already been learned. Going from almost no mind stimulation for three months to a constant, rigorous academic schedule can be an immense change. Summer projects can help a student prepare for the class with the information that will be most beneficial to them. Who knows the curriculum of a course better than the teacher of that particular course? Teachers generally know their subject material in and out. They know what is usually the hardest for students to understand and what the easiest is. By looking at data and statistics from the success rates of various units in past years, they know the skills that a student must have mastered in order to succeed in their class. Core subjects like Math, Science, English, and History, generally follow patterns of success with different subject material. When a majority of mutliple classes from many past years struggle with one area of the class curriculum, the chances of the upcoming classes struggling with the same thing are high. Teachers can use this knowledge to put together a project that either reviews foundational concepts, or introduces the basics of more complex concepts to better prepare students. With success as the main goal, a teacher is able to provide a summer project that would be the most beneficial to one of their future students.

Many high school students are infamous for their lack of motivation, organization, and time management skills. The general population of a high school is constantly looking for ways to cheat their way through the system, allowing for minimum effort to be put in. Everyday, new or useful hacks or shortcuts are made known.

While "work smarter, not harder" is a common and useful saying, many high schoolers interpret this the wrong way. Cheating the system is not working smarter. All around my high school, there are cases of stolen test answer keys used to cheat and online answer keys found and used to lighten a homework load. The attitude of a teacher towards work is much different than that of a teenager. Summer assignments tend to automatically rub students the wrong way. If it were left up to a student to design a summer project, it would most likely be something ridiculously easy and irrelevant to important and/or pariticularly challenging class material. Teacher's assignments are given out not to occupy but to educate. If students were able to design a summer project for future students, the chances of it being as beneficial as what a teacher would assign are slim. Teachers don't have a "cheat the system" mentality. They will give out work that will enrich a student even if it may take more time and/or effort to complete. Teacher designed summer enrichment projects will increase a student's chances of being successful in their new class.

A new school year brings on many changes and challenges in everyone's lives. Both students and teachers must adapt to the new environment presented to them each year. After having been familiar with a teachers preferred type of assignment, many students find the new school year to be intimidating and uncertain. Teacher designed summer projects allow the instructor to give their students a taste of what the new school year might entail. If a particular teacher feels that reading and annotating a textbook is an important aspect of the class, their summer project could and should reflect that. This gives the students an opportunity to prepare, practice, and perfect their annotating skills for future assignments throughout the year. Perhaps a teacher assigns reflections as a part of class work frequently. They might add a reflection component to whatever project is designed and then assigned to the students in order to signal to the students what to expect in the coming year. Not only does this give students a chance to practice a skill is regarded as important and assigned frequently by the teacher, but it also gives some clarity to what the future may hold. This clarity can be very calming and might take away some levels of stress in a student preparing for the next school year. Practice and preparedness from teacher designed projects allows students to better succeed in their course.

Teachers know their class. They know what is going to be most challenging and what a student would benefit from mastery the most. Because a teacher knows the class curriculum best, takes the material seriously, and can prepare the students for common upcoming assignments, teachers should design their own summer enrichment projects. The main goal of any summer project is to better assure success of a student in a particular class. If every student is going to have an opportunity to succeed, they must be given summer projects that are teacher designed, not student designed.