Summer projects. They are something that we all have either heard of or have experienced before in our lives. They are most-commonly despised by students, who don't even want to think of school over their nice, long summer break. However, they do offer some benefits including keeping students minds active over the break and introducing new areas of study that they may not be familiar with yet. Most summer projects do have benefits, but the fact of whether they are teacher-designed or student-designed can influence these benefits tremendously. While student-designed projects may offer a more engaging topic for students, teacher-designed projects offer many greater benefits including projects that are course based, cover more beneficial/harder topics, and allow teacher to assess a students knowledge on a subject.

The first reason summer projects should be teacher-designed is that teachers can design these projects based off of the course curriculum. Students may find these projects less engaging, but in reality they can help expose the student to what the course is going to be like/cover. All students schedule their classes for the following year sometime during the second semester of their current school year. Sometimes, students don't really have a sense of what is going to be covered in a certain class, especially if the course name doesn't do a very good job of describing what is actually going to be taught. For example, I am in my junior year of high school and just scheduled my classes for my senior year. I was debating whether to take AP Government or DE Government. By just looking off these two class names, you can't really tell what the difference is between the AP version and the DE version. With teacher-designed projects, teachers can show what is going to be taught to the students during the summer which may give them an idea of what class will be like. Overall, have summer projects be designed by teachers can help prepare students for the class they decided to take and gives a different perspective of some topics that will be covered throughout the year.

Another reason why summer projects should be designed by teachers is that the difficulty of the project can be chosen by the teachers. During summer, students really don't like to do much and rarely even think about school. They are busy relaxing and enjoying their time away from school. After all, summer is basically just a period where students get to enjoy being AWAY from school. Knowing this, why do people think student-designed projects are better/more beneficial than teacher-designed projects? I don't know about you, but if I was given the option to pick my summer project, I would most definitely not make it very hard. Do you think students want to be working on a project during their summer break? The answer to that is no. So its pretty obvious to see that when given the option of a harder topic, and an easier one, students will almost always choose the easier one. However, when students are given a project designed by the teachers, they have no choice but to complete it because it is specifically required for the class they are taking. With teacher-designed projects, teachers are able to pick a harder topic which will challenge students more and allow them to not slack off as much during the break. Overall, when teacher-designed projects help insure that a student will not pick a so called "easy" topic and will not slack off as much during the long period of time away from school.

The third and final reason why summer projects should be designed by teachers is because they are able to test a students level of knowledge on a given subject. If students were able to pick their own summer projects, they would most likely do something completely off topic that is very easy to them. This provides no benefit and doesn't really show the teacher their skill level. However, if the summer project is designed by the teacher, they have the ability to make it on a subject related to the course. At the end of summer, students will turn this project in to their teachers. This way teachers are able to acknowledge the level of skill a student has on a the subjects that are going to be covered in class. It also may help them change their curriculum if all students are already pretty good at a certain subject. This allows teachers to spend more time on things that students struggle with, and give them more time that would be wasted on teaching something students already know. In the end, teacher-designed project help give the teacher a better understanding of a students knowledge on a certain subject.

Overall, I believe that there are many benefits to both summer projects designed by teachers and students. However, I firmly believe that teacher-designed projects are way better and offer a lot more opportunities then student-designed projects. In the end, teacher-designed summer projects are more beneficial because the projects can be based of the course, insure students won't slack off during the summer, and help the teacher assess all students skill levels.