The Sun is blazing, the sky is blue, and school is out. What more do students want? Once summer starts school books are thrown to the back of the closet, never to be seen until the next year. This worries schools since when students aren't learning during the summer then classes have to be provided for students to relearn everything they forgot. This led schools to develop summer projects so that their students will learn during the summer. However, issues started to arise of how they should be designed. Some say teachers should design it and others say that students should design it. Although teacher-designed summer projects would help set guidelines so that the students can learn as much as they can, student-designed projects will let the students showcases their creativity.

When designing the summer projects, teachers most definitely would set guidelines for students to help them, when they get stuck. However, what teachers don't realize is that by setting guidelines they are really restricting the student's creativity. They are limiting what the students can do and for the students to get a good grade on the projects, they would base their entire project on those guidelines. Which would mean they aren't really learning. These set guidelines would correspond with the topics that the teacher assigns. The assigned topics would focus on the materials the students need the most help in. Which in reality is forcing the students to learn. When someone is forced to do something they aren't interested in doing, they wouldn't usually put their full effort in to completing that task. This is the same for students too. By forcing the students to do these projects and not letting them chose what topic to do, the students wouldn't put all their effort in the project. This represents that the students aren't actually learning. This would be the opposite effect of what the summer projects were intended to do.

If the students were to, however, design the projects instead, then the issue of them not learning would be avoided. By making the students design their own projects, they are able to showcase their own creativity and develop new skills. Most students, during school, have a difficult time demonstrating what creativity they have. However, by giving them this chance to design their own projects the students can really put their full heart into it since they would actually have interest in the topic. By being able to design their own projects students can also develop new skills, like leadership. Leadership is when someone is able to take charge in a difficult situation. The students would be able to represent this when they have to take charge to develop their own project based off the topic they chose. Having the ability to showcase their own creativity and develop new skills, students would be able to fully grasp what their learning. Schools then wouldn't have to worry about assigning classes so the students can relearn everything they forgot, since when school starts in the fall students would be ready to tackle new topics.

When it comes to demonstrating why students should design their own projects, schools should look towards the science fair. The science fair is a student-designed project that every student has to do, at least once, in their high school or middle school life. The science fair makes students pick a topic that their experiment would be based off of. When picking the topic, the student is showcasing their creative side since they aren't restricted on what topic to pick. During the experiment process, students are able to develop research skills for when they have to write their background paper on their hypothesis. Since they would need to find respected articles that relate to their hypothesis. Students would also be developing their leadership skills since when doing their experiment things can go wrong and they have to take charge and figure out why. At the end of the science fair process, students can then really grasp the understanding of the scientific design process and how to develop a well done experiment. This would all be possible since the science fair is a student designed project. If the teacher were to design the project and pick the topics, students would have never been able to fully understand the scientific design process.

Schools should make the summer projects student-designed since it allows students to showcase their creative side. Even if having them teacher-designed would help set guidelines the students can look back at when stuck. By having teachers design the projects, students are going to be restricted and aren't going to be able to really learn since they won't be putting all their effort into the project. This would all be avoided if students were to design the projects themselves, because they won't be restricted and instead they would put all their effort into the project. At the end, students would be developing new skills and getting to actually learn. A perfect example is the science fair, where students are made to design their own experiments so that they can understand the scientific design process and how to properly make a experiment. Schools should trust their own students for their own learning at certain times.