There is a concern that students come back to school not being ready to learn. Matter of fact, according to

Generic_City Times,

88% of students coming back from summer break are not mentally ready for school. Students and their families take vacations to free their mind off of school/work. Being off for three months for vacations/ free time, can be difficult for the students, as they come back to school. Students come back "rusty" or not ready, because their mind is still set on having a good time with friends and not doing any homework. To solve this problem (of students not being ready for school), school boards are deciding to require summer projects to assure they continue learning during their break. The question the school board is asking is, should summer projects be teacher-designed or student-designed? Summer projects should be designed by the student because students will pick a topic of interest, will not get a topic that they don't like, and teachers may give students challenging projects students are not capable of doing.

Picking your own topic for a summer project can lead to better grades. According to "Academic Awards", students achieved better grades when they work on a subject of choice. A student said at the awards, "When I got to write about Hockey, which is my favorite sport, I put so much effort and time into my paper. I loved to write about how great of a game Hockey is. I truly believe that if you are allowed to write about a topic that you have true passion for, it will lead to great success. This aspect does not only apply to school work, but also the real world." There have been many studies on how "doing the thing you love" will bring you great success. That same aspect goes with school, students learn and perform better when they are learning a subject of interest.

Normally, students do not like the topic of research a teacher assigns. People who went through school know that we have always had projects/ papers that do not fit our interest. Students slack on this aspect because they do not have true passion into what they are writing (not interested) or learning. One student from Generic_School states, "My true passion was history, I loved to write about the challenges, wars, and new changes of the world. I was looking forward to writing papers about history because this is the topic that ultimately interested me, but when I had to write about a science paper, I had absolute no interest writing about it. I would make up excuses to myself on why I shouldn't write this paper." Teachers teach about mandatory subjects that are either boring or not interesting. If summer assigned projects are brought to the attention, then teachers should not give out their own idea of what the student has to complete.

Not only do teachers pick uninteresting topics to research about, but they also pick topics that may be to challenging for the writer to complete. Teachers give out topics of study that are challenging for the student to learn about and can bring a student down (not wanting to complete the assignment). A student from Generic_City said, "If I got a paper that was teacher-designed and difficult, I would not be up to do it. We already had to go through a whole school year doing what they teacher wanted us to do, why can't we choose our own topic for the summer?" If a student gets a topic from a teacher that is to hard for them to achieve during summer, then they will procrastinate to finish it. Teachers have the whole school year to give out challenging projects to students, but for summer projects, a student should not be assigned hard and rigorous work.

Students should design their own summer projects because they will value their project more, won't get a bad topic (get to choose own topic), and don't have to deal with challenging topics teachers hand out. There have been many factors that have been in place to deal with students not coming mentally prepared on the first day of school. Should summer be shortened? Should schools give out homework for students to complete during the summer, so learning will be longer lasting? At the end of the day, no matter what the belief is about school work being done over the summer, student should be able to design and apply their own project. 