Its that time of year where students have to complete a summer project. These projects are a way of making sure that the students are learning and being productive throughout their summer vacation. Students best know their own interests, so, summer projects should be student-designed because it ensures that students will be engaged, leads to completion of the project, and promotes the continuation of their interests.

Although, some people may think that student-designed summer projects are not the best way to have students continue their education. For the reasons of it leads to researching non-important topics or results in students not taking the project seriously. This point of view makes sense because if the projects are teacher-designed it would ensure that all students are learning about something important and valuable to their education. However, this point of view is wrong because the definition of an important topic is different to everyone. Students will do the summer project on something of importance or value to them because they have the option to make it something or their own and make it unique.

Students will always become engaged in a topic if the have the freedom to choose it. While students are getting ready to choose what they want to do during the summer they will become interested about the topic they choose. This will make sure that students are kept interested throughout the summer to produce something that they are proud of. For example, a students favorite animal is a panda and he or she wants to research, visit museums, visit libraries, and visit the zoo to learn more about them and be able to come up with a good project. This student is eager to learn about something he or she loves and is passionate about. This project will keep this student fully engaged through the summer learning about the panda. All students have something that they are interested in and if they choose a topic and create a project it may even open and door to a passion they were not aware of.

In addition, the completion of the student-designed summer project is critical to their learning because without the completion of it students will not get the full experience of learning what they picked on their project. If students are allowed to design their own projects the teachers will not have to worry about a students not completing the project because they became uninterested or bored. Students will be eager to complete their projects and that is all a teacher could want is to have a student eager about a project and then complete it because they wanted to not because they were forced to. For example a student is given the topic of rocks and the student has never had an interest in this. The student will struggle because they have no interest in researching rocks. This student will most likely not complete the project or will do it in the last week of summer. This prevents students of having a valuable learning experience with something that they like.

As well as students having a variety of interests, if the summer projects are student-designed they could explore an area of interest that they are already familiar with and dive in deep to what they like. This could help a student find out more information on a topic they think they may like or already know that they have a passion for. For example, if a student is interested in medicine and they want to become a doctor why would they need to research rocks? This student will have the time to research what she wants to do with her future while also completing her schools requirement. It is a great thing for a young student to already be setting their mind into what they will like to do in their future and researching it.

Summer learning projects should be student-designed because it help ensure that students will be engaged, leads to project completion, and allows for the continuation of personal interests. Students need to have a time to be able to research and make a project on a topic that they enjoy learning about and what better time than the summer to do that. Young students are the future, so, the schools should permit student-designed summer projects to have the students better understand the topic of their choice. The next time students have to do summer project they should be allowed to design it and stride for their best educational experience.