Summer break is really the students' time. They get to unwind, relax, and be youthful and chaotic. That being said, they should get to design their own summer project. They can shift it to an area of strong personal interest and present their results in a way that they prefer. It would also give teachers a break from lesson planning and let them relax a bit more over the summer. It would even help the students actually learn better since it's self-paced over three months of time. Let the students design their summer project.

Students should be able to focus on a topic that interests them. They spend 180 seven-hour days in school, over half of which are spent on things that the student will never use nor care about in their life. In fact, I would say that, based on my experience in an average year of high school, that only about thirty-one out of the 180 days are actually interesting due to content of learning. If the student cares about the work they are doing, then they will do a better job and have a higher quality finished product. Plus, they will not end up turning in thirty-five of the exact same project.

If students get to design their summer project, it would take some of the stress away from the teachers. Based on the amount of homework I have received from some of my classes this year, teachers are given too much content to teach in 180 days, especially with so many variables of events. Things such as snow days and sicknesses cause a light panic for the teachers, and the resulting work annoys the student body. It would really make things a lot easier for students to design their own individual projects than be assigned a mass-produced rubric and checklist on the last day of school.

Students get a large amount of information in the course of a single day, ranging from how to calculate compound interest to learning how WWI changed warfare as we knew it. I can tell you with 100 percent certainty that all of that information is forgotten about by the next morning, and the information gets lost. If summer break is three months long, imagine how easily the information will be forgotten if they have to do a structured, formulaic, factory-style requirements list that is three months of ordinary school content. They would learn nothing from it, and waste three months. If they get to design their own project, however, they get to set their own deadlines and set up the requirements so they actually do learn something, which is the whole purpose of the project.

Personally, I would like to say that a summer project of any kind is a bad idea. If the law of the land decrees that a summer project should be assigned to the students, let the students design their own projects. It will help them actually learn about their interests, in their own way. Teachers will be able to worry about one less thing. I got to design my own project once, and ended up making a movie about genetics and the brain's abilities, and it was probably my favorite project ever, because I got to learn about something that I waned to learn about and present it in a way that I enjoyed. There is no better feeling than getting to demonstrate your abilities and strengths for something you care about. Believe me, I have looked, but nothing comes close.