How would one feel if a teacher said that every student would be taking the exact same courses in high school? Everyone would feel very uncomfortable because they are forced to do something that they may not like. Well, this is the same scenario as whether the summer projects should be teacher-designed or student-designed. These summer projects offer the students to test out their skills and find out what they are proficient at. Summer projects should be student-designed because they can choose projects/topics that they are familiar with. Unlike teacher-designed projects, student-designed projects offers a far more widespread of new opportunities.

My first reason to why summer projects should be student-designed is because they can choose projects/topics that they are familiar with. For example, in the summer between 7th and 8th grade, the Geometry HN teachers assigned the incoming students an essay about geometry where we could write about anything related to the subject. Since I was allowed to choose what to write about, I decided to find real life applications of math and I was able to correlate these applications with basketball, one of my favorite sports. I wrote about how the basketball scoring was related to addition, how the court dimension was related to surface area, how shooting the basketball at certain angles/distances helps the ball go into the net, and etc. People should expect students to succeed at student-designed projects because students can choose topics that they are good at. Another example, in the summer between 8th and 9th grade, was when the students were given a book to read,

The Other Wes Moore . When school started, we had a Socratic Seminar about the book in my English 9 HN class. However, most people either hated the book or did not read it because that book was not a fan-favorite genre among the students. I was not able to finish reading the book because the first page was so boring that I would have rather watched paint dry. If the students were authorize to choose their book, they would be able to pick books from their genres or even books that they can personally relate to.

My second reason to why summer projects should be student-designed is because, unlike teacher-designed projects, student-designed projects offers a far more widespread of new opportunities. If everybody was assigned the same area of science for the science fair, then everybody would do very similar projects. However, student-designed projects allows students to try out new things and figure out whether or not they are good at it. For example, when choosing my 6th grade science fair project, I was originally going to choose an area of science that I was already good at, biology. However, I wanted to challenge myself, so I chose to do a project that revolves around physics, balancing. After I executed this concept to my project, I knew that it would take a while because I was new to this field. Once everyone was done with their project and their presentation, the results came in and I ended up getting second place in the whole school. Student-designed projects encourages students to not shy away from trying new things. Another example, in the summer between 6th and 7th grade, was when students were given an essay prompt to write about rather than letting us choose our own prompt. The prompt was about "would you rather be in jail for 10 years for a crime you didn't commit or would you rather commit a crime and live with the feeling that you could be caught anytime." My friend, Generic_Name, was completely stumped on what to write because he was not very good at writing essays, which is why he took English 7 HN--in hopes of improving his essay-writing skills. He ended up failing that essay due to lack of freedom given by the teachers' choice of the prompt. If Generic_Name was able to choose a prompt that and not be limited to one, then he might have been able to succeed at that essay.

As a result, some people may argue that teacher-designed projects creates a fair environment to everybody because every student has to the same projects. However, all this does is encourage more cheating because if every student is given the same project, then students can "work" with their friends to finish this projects faster. For example, in the summer between 9th and 10th grade, the students were given the same Pre-Calculus HN summer packet. To finish this faster, my friends and I each did three pages (total of 15 pages) and sent the completed work to each other. We completed the packet in less than 3 hours and got full credit for it all because we had the same thing to do. If students have to same assignment as others, then they will easily take full advantage of it by "working" together. Whereas, if students are allowed to choose their project, but not be able to do something that has already been done, they every student will succeed.

In conclusion, student-designed summer projects prevents cheating, creates more and new opportunities, and allows students to choose what they like. If teachers design the projects, then they are basically controlling one's decisions because they aren't allowing the students to widen their skills. So, answer this question again: How would you feel if a teacher said that every student would be taking the exact same courses in high school?