The last thing students want to do during summer break is complete an assigned project for school. Often times students are going on vacations, spending time with family and friends, or even just trying to relax from the previous school year. Summer is an opportunity for kids to explore their freedoms and luxuries of life. Students will most likely wait until the last few days of summer to begin a project designed and driven by their teacher. This then makes the teacher look like the "bad guy" for assigning the project in the first place. These summer projects need to be student-designed to give them the opportunity to be creative, have a real motive and passion to complete the project on time, and still have fun during the summer like they would be in the first place.

During the school year, students are consistently encouraged to be creative and think "outside-the-box". That creativity should not be stripped away from the students now that summer is in full swing. People often are more filled with creativity during their younger years as children and teenagers. Young kids often explore their creativity by making forts, assuming roles in games such as "cops and robbers", or even thinking of new games or toys to play with. Teenagers explore their creativity often by making new inventions, creating new ways to help the environment, or trying to find ways to make the world a better place. These summer projects can be a chance for kids to explore more about something they may want to do and get a chance to find out what really interests them. This can then lead to what their future career choice may be when they go off to college and such. Some might say that the students may get too "off-topic" if they design their own projects; however, the teachers can still have requirements the students need to follow, while having the students design what they want to do. Younger students will need more guidance to get started or to know what is expected of them. These projects need to have a main focus of being mostly student-designed, rather than completely teacher-designed, in order to prevent and confine the creativity of our future adults that will one day make impacts on our world.

Real passion and a desire to do something is rare for people to find early in life, but when they do eventually find it, their lives change forever. Steve Sabol was the creator of NFL Films and is responsible for the recording of some of the most memorable moments in NFL history. Steve, at a young age, loved to play football, but also had a passion for film making and art. He soon realized that he had a passion to do something no one has ever done before and that was combining football with the film industry. Steve and his dad recorded the first ever Super Bowl in 1962 and edited it into cool video montages. They did this every following year and quickly gained lots of notoriety. The NFL took notice as well and partnered with them to create NFL Films, which still stands today. All it took Steve was time to find out his true passions and put them to use in his career. Giving students in school the ability to research what they want and produce what they want in a project, opens so many doors for them and their future. The students can design their project their way, which may actually have them be more willing to put forth real effort over the summer, thus giving teachers what they wanted in the first place, students continuing to learn over the break.

One of the main purposes for having summer break is to allow kids to enjoy their childhood and have fun. Giving a teacher-designed project to these kids will create a dark cloud over their summer, especially if it is something boring like writing an essay, conducting an experiment, or creating a PowerPoint. Yes these may be good ways for the kids to express what they might learn, but the topics should be of their interest and not all of the teacher's ideas. I once had to read a book and write an essay during summer when I was going into the sixth grade. It was absolutely awful, and the main reason why was because we all had to read the same book and write the same prompt for the essay. The book was about a young girl and boy falling in love while raising baby chicks, which is not my kind of book. I would rather read a sports, mystery, or even maybe historical fiction novel before a romance novel. I would have loved to complete the assignment if I was given my choice of a book and prompt; however, that is now all I pretty much remember about that summer and not for the right reasons.

I cannot remember a teacher that has shot down my creativity and wanted me to be like everyone else. The job of teachers is to have kids learn and show improvement while having an influence and impact on their lives. These summer assignments will most likely not even be a grade, so why be so strict with them? This can be a chance to change a young student's life and have them start off on the right foot with their teacher. The students' summer should be fun and enjoyable, while still maintaining and gaining knowledge. The best way to balance both of these is making their projects student-designed.