A big issue in the school system is the question as to how to keep students working their brains over summer break. Many students find themselves or their peers to be stuggling with their work when they return to school in the Fall. A great number of schools have found success in assigning projects for each student to complete throughtout their break to ensure children to excercise their brains. The debate over summer projects is whether the assignment would be more beneficial if it were designed by teachers or the students themselves. Summer projects should be student-designed in order to provide oppertunities for creativity and independent studies, contibuting to important life skills.

Allowing students to design a project specific to their interests encourages the student to express a creative process. The initial task of choosing a project requires the student to get creative with their resources based on what they find interesting. This process is critial to forming skills such as decision making and reasoning. Creating the project itself provides multiple levels of creativity and self expression for the student. Without a general project outline, the student will have to come up with ideas completely personal and relevant to themself. With the wide variation of projects produced from peer to peer, little input from other students will affect each others work. Enabling the students to set focus on topics and presentations personal to themselves sets the class up fo success by introducing crutial skills of creativity and hardwork.

Student-designed projects will put students in a position to work and study independently, providing skills for future education and career paths. Many projects in the workplace consist of due dates in the future, leaving the employee responsible for time management and execution of the project. It is the responsibility of the employee or student to choose a project reasonable for time provided and work required. Projects that are student-designed will help form these skills so students can maximize them later in their careers. A student-designed project will allow students to work and study independently, leaving them solely responsible for their research and production of their project. Learning at a younger age to be acountable for their assignments will benefit the work ethic of the students in the future. While it may be a concern that students would choose a project too simple for their skill level or without much hark work behind it, a set of standards from a rubric could guide the students in the right direction to complete a challenging project on their own and gain important life skills through it.

Assigning students student-designed projects will benefit students by encouraging hard work, creativity, and life skills. It is important to give students the option for independent and self designed work to push students to use their skills and succeed in future oppertunities of education and career paths.