As a student, summer projects does not sound appealing. In my years of school, I have never had to do any kind of summer reading or summer projects, and I am completely okay with that. However, they can be quite beneficial to our education, if done correctly. The debate is whether these projects should be student-designed or teacher-designed. There are pros and cons to both options. For example, student-designed projects could sound more appealing to the student and give them more control, but it could also end up not benefiting their education at all. Teacher-designed projects would ensure that we are benefiting our education, but it could cause students to not want to do the project, simply because it's work over the summer they are being forced to do. However, I think these projects should be teacher designed. It needs to be ensured the projects being done will benefit our education, otherwise it defeats the whole purpose of summer projects.

As a junior in high school, I know that over the summer I have no motivation to do schoolwork. So if I had to not only do a project, but come up with what to do, I probably just wouldn't do it, or I would procrastinate it until the end of the summer. If a teacher gave me guidelines and an outline of what I needed to do, I would already be one step closer to being done. If the project was teacher designed, it wouldn't help with the fact that most students would procrastinate their work and wait until the last minute, but it would still help because it's slightly less work the student has to do. With project outlines already given to students, they may have the motivation to get it done as soon as school gets out, so they wouldn't have to worry about it all summer.

While it may sound nice to do a "student-designed project," it may end up not being beneficial to our education. We could do a really fun project that we enjoyed doing, but it may have no benefit to us, therefore defeating the entire purpose of school projects over the summer. So, if the teacher designed our project, they could ensure our project is benefiting us and helping us learn effectively.

Although I think the projects should be teacher-designed, I think the teacher should give a variety of options of projects to do. Different people learn in different ways. This way, the students can pick which project will benefit them the most, and have them learn the best. It would also be good because it gives the students more control over what they are doing, and how they are doing it. If I was only given one option, of one boring project, that would again cause me to lose motivation and cause procrastination. However, if I had several options of what to do, I could pick something I enjoyed doing. It would be a "teacher-designed project," but would still give the students some control.

In conclusion, summer projects would be the most helpful to our education if they were teacher designed. There is nothing you can do about students procrastinating the project. However, if you give them a specific assignment (or a few options of assignments), they are one step closer to being done, and they wouldn't have to create and complete a project entirely on their own.