As students are furthering their education, teachers are assigning summer assignments in order to prepare them for their upcoming class. Many believe these summer assignments should be student designed due to students' convenience, nevertheless, these summer assignments should be teacher designed because it ensures that students are prepared for the class, exposes them to new material outside of their comfort zone, and keeps students' busy throughout the break.

Before the school year ends, teachers take time out of their work day to produce a summer assignment for their students' next school year. Having teacher designed summer assignments help ensure that students are ready for the content in their upcoming year. Students are unable to know their struggles with next years content until they are actually in that class. Teachers are able to look at their lower scoring topics of the year and put a couple questions of that topic onto the summer assignment. By doing this, it will help the students learn from the past students' struggle topics. Because of the summer assignment, students are able to get a boost and learn quicker when they are being taught in class. An example of this happened during a student's sophomore year while picking their junior year classes. This particular student had to choose between academic biology or honors biology; they were unsure of which class they wanted to take. The student eventually choose honors biology in the end; she found out that about the summer assignment due the first week of classes. She struggled with converting units and was nervous the topic would be a struggle in the class. Her teacher assured her that it was normal to struggle as many other students struggled with that as well. She complained on and on until she came into class that next year and excelled due to the summer assignment she completed. If the student had designed her own summer assignment, she would not have excelled as well as she did because of the teacher designed summer assignment.

As teachers are designing their own summer assignment for their class, they put new material that the students have never been exposed to. While many express how having student designed summer assignments give students more freedom; they don't realize how most students will not go outside of their comfort zone to learn new material. If the students were to design their own summer assignment, all of the material will be information that they already knew or are most comfortable with. Teacher designed summer assignments will give a chance for the student to push themselves out of their comfort zone to learn new information that will ultimately help them with their next school year. For example, the summer before junior year, an AP Language and Composition teacher gave students an assignment that included reading or watching 15 sources. These 15 sources had to be stretched out from 5 different categories: current events, history, politics, entertainment, and documentaries. The students were forced out of their comfort zone by their teacher having their students exposed to all of the different categories. Because of the exposure, the students are aware of information they would not have known if they didn't complete the assignment. When given the chance, students will stay in their own comfort zone; which the teachers can break when there are teacher designed summer assignments.

When the teachers are trying to break students' comfort zones with the summer assignments, it gives the students a chance to think outside of the box and spend more time trying to interpret the new information. For most students, summer break is filled with eating and watching TV on their couch; if the students were given the chance to design their own assignment for the break, they would put easy information for them to complete in order for them to have more time to spend on the couch eating chips. The students would come back with their minds still tangled up with the TV and couch; if teachers were to design the assignment, the teachers would put information that they know would keep the students' minds busy and working throughout the summer. This makes it easier for students to ease back into school; rather than them still being in summer mode 3 months into the school year.

Being eased back into the school year is a thing many students struggle with. It can be fixed by having teacher designed summer assignments. It is time for all teachers to regulate teacher designed summer assignments in order to make the school year easier for all students. While many students will complain about the workload, it will pay off later when they realize the summer assignment helped them with the content of the class. They will also be interested in new topics because of the teachers input in the summer assignment to push them outside of their comfort zone. Overall, summer assignments have been proven to assist students all around when they are teacher designed.