Studies have proven that schools that assign projects and assignments for their students to work on over the summer have seen a much higher success rate in the upcoming school year than if they didn't assign anything. To students, summer projects are not their ideal way to spend their summer and they often procrastinate until the end of the school year. Some projects may be really fun and interesting, but others may be thick packets of mindless busy work that can really take the fun out of summer vacation. Although teachers are around students all of the time, they still have some blind spots as to how they learn the best and what will encourage them to get their work done. If the summer projects that the students are assigned were to be student-designed instead of teacher-designed, there would be a much higher completion rate, less blame on the teacher for the project, and the projects would be better suited to match the students knowledge on the subject.

To start, student-designed summer projects would lead to a higher completion rate. The students would feel more compelled to complete their projects knowing that they were the ones to design it. There's something different about doing something someone else made and is forcing you to do rather than something you took the time to make that you know you will understand when you work on it. For example, you work at a business with a group of people and you were all individually assigned to create a plan of how the company would take on a new project. After you all have presented your separate ideas you've worked really hard on, your boss chooses this other guy's plan over yours. For the next few months, you now have to work on his plan with him controlling everything are doing, which is miserable. If your plan was the one to be chosen, you would have a much better attitude towards working on this plan because you were the one to design it. This scenario works the same with students and teachers. Students don't like being given work during the time that they're supposed to not worry about school, especially when they have no control over the matter. This is the first reason why summer projects should be student-designed.

To add, if summer projects were student-designed, students would be a lot less upset at their teachers for giving them work over the summer. When they go to start working on their projects, they will know what to be expecting, so they won't be blindsided with difficult curriculum that they will spend hours trying to figure out while they are resenting their teachers for making them that stressed over the summer. If they are the ones to design it, they cannot blame their teachers for anything, and they most likely won't find a reason to blame anyone. It would definitely be a good idea to have the teachers set a general level of information they have to know for the upcoming school year so that they don't have the students designing their summer projects with information they already learned in previous years. This way, the teachers will be happy because the students are learning the information they want them to learn, and the students will also be happy because they had control over how they got to complete their work.

Lastly, student-designed summer projects would give students the opportunity to design the curriculum given to them in a way that they can understand and complete the assignment to their best ability. Some teachers can tend to over estimate their students ability and knowledge of a subject, so only the students can truly know their own ability and know what will help them be able to understand the material the most. At the end of the day, the goal of the summer assignment is to keep students learning during their break and give them an introduction into what they will be learning about in their next school year. Allowing the students to design the projects will most likely achieve this goal better than if a teacher were to design it. For example, math is one of the subjects that students tend to struggle with the most, and giving them an assignment with material on it that they are unfamiliar with because it's something they will learn next school year is not beneficial, especially if they do not have a teacher with them to ask questions. If the student designs it, they will be able to take the topics given to them by their teachers and include links to websites such as Khan Academy to help themselves with it over the summer. Overall, students know what works best for them and they are the ones completing the work, so the least the school can do for them is allow them to design their own summer projects.

In conclusion, summer projects are beneficial to students in their preparation for the upcoming school year; however, giving the students the opportunity to design their projects will lead to more success over the teacher-designed projects. Students being more likely to complete something they designed, taking away the blame students would normally put on teachers, and students knowing their own ability and knowledge are three out of the many reasons why summer projects should be student-designed. Ultimately, it would be ideal for both students and teachers to work together on designing the projects so that the students know what the teacher is looking for and the teachers can understand what the students are able to do; however, the students should have more control of the projects because they are the ones completing the projects, and it is their future that is being affected.