Over the years many schools have assigned summer projects as a way to help keep students minds active while on break. These projects can include reflection essays, construction, reading catalogs, and many other wonderful things. At the moment many of these projects are designed by the teachers, however many schools are considering switching to projects designed by the students. Students designed teacher approved projects would be better for the future of education as they would allow students to think critically, increase their desire to learn, and tailor projects to their strengths and learning styles.

To begin student designed projects allow for more creativity and critical thinking rather than fallowing a check list the teacher created. Most teacher designed projects rely on specific structures and check list drawn up by the teacher for the students to fallow. They do no prompt the students to: think, learn, ponder, and reflect, rather they give students a list of mundane tasks to complete and check off. Critical thinking and complex learning comes from hands on practice thought and refection. Giving a student a complex prompt or problem and allowing them to design the project themselves in order to answer it, stimulates the brain far more than handing the student an assignment where the answers have already been neatly planed and laid out by the teacher. For a better education students need to be able to solve problems on their own and chart their own waters, they will never grow if they are always defendant on a teacher to tell them what to do and how to do it.

Furthermore student designed projects allow students to focus on things they find interesting and want to learn about increasing their overall desire to learn. Often times struggling students or children who "hate" school may just feel bored and there are many students who don't try in school because they feel like the subjects they study have no purpose or that it will have no value for their future career. These students often do not participate in teacher designed summer projects as many see summer as their time off from the burden of school and teacher projects appear as boring and useless to them. If these students were allowed to design hear projects, however, so that they focused on topics important to them there could very well be an increase in their participation and desire to learn. When people study things they like and enjoy the often perform better this can be seen at schools like the Generic_School MATA programs where every student who attends wants to be there and as a result they are active and engaged each day. It can be inferred that if the logic applied to the MATA programs is applied to summer projects, students studying things they enjoy increases learning motivation, more students would participate and find value in summer projects.

In addition to the a fore mentioned points student design projects could be tailored to a students academic need and strengths in a way teacher designed projects are not. While many teachers say no child left behind that is often not the case with summer projects. Because these projects are assigned before the teacher gets the chance to really know the students a it is difficult to adjust to a students specific needs. A teacher may assign project with lots of heavy reading not knowing that a few of her students are dyslexic, or a different teacher may assign something on a topic many of the students are already well versed in so it has little value to repeat it. Student designed projects would avoid these conflicts as the students know themselves best and could be able to tailor their project to their strengths. Many English classes have already found success in doing this where instead of assigning books that students may have already read or are difficult for some to read, these classes allow students to study books of their choice or listen to audio books. Student designed projects are often more applicable to students lives and as a result they are a better form of education and learning than teacher designed projects.

Some may contradict that student designed projects would promote laziness and the students would not learn anything of value from them. This is why these projects would have to be teacher approved; however, even if they are not the value of learning to think and the other benefits of student designed projects outweighs the over specified structure of the teacher designed projects.

In the end student designed projects are most beneficial to students due to their freedom to allow for critical thinking, the study of subjects students enjoy increasing learning motivations, and their unique ability to be tailored to each students needs.