Summer is the time for students to finally relax their brain and rest before restarting that thinking engine again. It's all fun and games, until students forget the material and have to learn everything again. After recognizing that, some schools required students to complete summer projects to assure they continue learning during their break.

Even though the idea and purpose of summer projects is present, there's been a debate on the format of those projects: teacher-designed or student-designed. The difference between teacher-designed and student-designed projects is that teacher-designed means the teacher sets specific instructions on how to complete the project; whereas, student-designed is having the student create a project off of a prompt. If schools require students to complete projects during the summer, it should be student-designed because it gives them the opportunity to learn independently and think creatively.

When you are younger, you are dependent on any adult that could guide you in anything: school, work, home, etc; but as you get older, you beging to form your own opinions and start to crave more independence. Your need for independence becomes restricted because the school system doesn't allow you to be independent. The school system gives the students the mentality that you have to follow the teacher's rules because of the concept that the teacher is always right and the student is always wrong. This prevents students from learning independently, because it requires the students to depend on the teacher and makes students believe that they are always wrong. If teachers encouraged students to learn independently by having their projects be more student-designed, their accademic performance could improve, they can become more independent, and bring out more ideas to the table. Learning independently gives students a sense of pride after accomplishing their goals by themselves.

Not only does student-designed summer projects help students become more independent, but teaches creative thinking. When you were in preschool, you tended think outside the box or color outside the lines because you were encouraged do so: you were encouraged to be imaginative. School encourages you to think creatively or be creative, but how can you do that when your creative abilities are being restricted? Summer projects that are student-designed is a good start for learning creative thinking because it gives the student time to learn and adjust by themselves. If students were able to think more creative, they would be able to learn how to think above and beyond and might even bring some new and reformed ideas to the table. Having school projects be student-designed is relevant to creative thinking because it is a skillset that you won't only need at school but in the workplace as well, because businesses thrive off of new ideas to help increase profit.

Some may argue that teacher-designed projects are more easy to grade and helps keep students from going off-topic. Even though teacher-designed projects are easier to grade for teachers, it limits the students' ability to push themselves to go farther and think independently. Straight-forward instructions does keep students on track on the topic, but it doesn't motive them to actually do the work. Teacher-designed projects have step-by-step guidelines and rules with a clear idea of what the projects should look like which makes it easy, but it is more restricting to the students' creative abilities because it doesn't allow for them to think outside the box; which causes them to lose the motivation to complete the project. Student-designed projects allow students to think more freely and be less dependent of teachers.

Although there are disadvantages in having summer projects be student-designed, advantages help in th long run because it teaches and encourages students at a young age to be more creative and independent. Anyone can follow simple instructions, but thinking creatively and learning independently are difficult skillsets that you can't accomplish with step-by-step guidelines.