Some schools require that students complete a project over the summer break between school years. These projects are designed to ensure that the students are still learning and keeping their minds active during the long summer break. Many questions are being asked about these summer projects as more and more schools being to require them. Although, the question at hand when it come to these summer projects is who the projects should be designed by, the students or the teachers. The teachers designing the projects is the obviously better choice. When the projects are designed by the teachers, students are able to understand what to expect from their teachers of the upcoming school year, as well as to help encourage the learning process for students, even over their summer break. Teacher designed projects would not hinder, or inhibit, the process of learning, as they would if the students were to design them instead.

Teachers understand how to encourage the learning process much better than students. Some teachers may not be as experienced as other teachers, but they all are still required to achieve a college degree in teaching. While getting this degree, future teachers learn deeply about the proper ways to encourage students to learn, even if it is over the summer. Students may argue that they understand the ways their brains work and how they learn, but there are many things that they have yet to learn due to young age and inexperience. Teachers know much more than students about how the brain reacts to new information and ways to encourage the absorption of that information. Encouraging the students to learn over the summer keeps their minds active, rather than dormant. This then helps students understand the subjects they are to have in the next school year exponentially more than when students design the projects. Teachers are more developed and experienced in the subject they teach than the students they teach are. It is why they are now the teacher, and no longer the student.

When the projects are designed by the teacher, students understand what to expect from their future teachers once returning to school again. This process also helps students get a head start on the next school year, making it easier on the students as they will know a small amount about the subject they are to learn before the class even begins. This also helps the teachers because the students will be able to grasp the subject more smoothly, so teachers are not as frustrated in trying to teach the students in the beginning of the school year. When the students minds are kept active over the summer, they do not lose the information given to them from the previous school year as easily. This helps students in the beginning of the school year because then they are not just violently thrown back into the learning process of school. Doing so just shocks their brains, and not in a pleasant way. It's the equivalent of throwing a small child into a freezing cold pool on a hot summer day. By doing this, students easily get frustrated with their studies, and it takes them much longer to be able to absorb the information they are given in the beginning of the school year. But, being given a project over the summer allows their minds to slowly get back into the learning process of school once again, making it much easier to grasp subjects and absorb the information they need.

When students are provided the chance to be able to design their own project, they almost always take the, what we would say is the "easy route." This means that they are more likely to be lazy about the project and design an extremely easy one to be able to complete it quickly and then never think about it again until it is due. This is not the purpose of the idea of summer projects, but this is how students shall treat it as. After all, if one is given the choice between doing something quite easy versus having to put in more work and time to accomplish something a bit more difficult, the average person would choose the easier, more lazy route. So, why would students not do the same? Yes, some students are more focused upon their studies than most, but even then, many, if not all, would choose to do something that is easy that will take little time over something that is more difficult and may take a longer amount of time to complete.

The choice between a teacher designed project and a student designed project is a no-brainer. Teachers create projects that better help the students to be able to learn over the summer and the beginning of the school year. When teachers create the projects students are not thrown into the ocean to sink or swim, at the beginning of the school year. Instead, the students are actually able to learn and comprehend the material given to them. Students are also given a prerequisite for what it is that they shall be learning in the upcoming school year, allowing them to prepare for the subjects that approach them. There will not be a lazy route for the students to travel upon; they will learn and be better prepared with the teacher designed projects than they will be with projects designed by their fellow students. Given the choices, one should always choose a teacher designed project over a student designed project as it is obvious that teacher designed projects are the extraordinarily better option.