Humans are so diverse. Some may be similar, but none are the exact same. Students are no different, even though they may be learning the same information, the way students understand and learn that information can be vastly different. Teachers help students learn materials through a variety of methods, like projects and tests. Schools that require students to complete summer projects should make the projects student designed, proving that there are many different ways of learning.

Depending on the student, some methods of learning are incredibly more beneficial than others. When I learned vital concepts such as multiplication, the way my teacher taught was through constant out loud repetition of the material, which helped my classmates along, but not me. I needed to see the problem worked out and look at the numbers because I had trouble picturing all the math and numbers in my head. Not being able to understand that basic concept of multiplication was detrimental to my math abilities and led the following years of my math career to be absolutely exhausting. This same scenario could take place involving summer projects. A teacher could give a student a summer assignment to help them learn about a concept in that class, but if the design of the assignment was difficult for the student to understand, it could be more hurtful than helpful. The entire reason teachers and schools assign projects over the summer is to assure that students will continue to learn during their break, but how are the students supposed to learn if they can't understand or have trouble with the assignment?

Projects are meant to provoke students to think, and having students design the project themselves is a great way for them to think more and therefore learn more. If students designed a summer project, they would have to think about what to do since they most likely won't have as many guidelines that a teacher typically would give. This allows students the opportunity to be creative and think outside the box. Students could then potentially learn a lot about themselves and not just whatever the subject of the project is. If the student creates the project themselves, it seems more likely that they would actually enjoy the project. And if they enjoyed doing the project, they will remember it more. I don't remember the material from my psychology summer assignment this year. All we had to do was research and write about a basic concept from psychology. I do, however, remember the Latin project I did in seventh grade. I think this is because I was allowed to do the project on anything related to Latin that I wanted. All my teacher asked of us was that the project was somehow Latin related. I decided to do my project on ancient roman customs, specifically the different rituals performed as a person reaches certain ages. From that project I remember things like that at six months old a young roman boy gets a round pendant called a bulla to protect them from evil spirits and when they reach age twelve the receive a new type of toga and more. I could not tell you about the five methods of observation used in psychology, which is what my summer assignment this year (11th grade) was about.

Some may argue that having students design summer projects is a bad idea because the typical student is lazy and will make an easy project design so that they won't have to actually learn anything. If this is true, having a teacher designed project does not change that situation. The reality is that if a student is lazy and doesn't want to learn, they will not learn. For my psychology summer assignment, I was lazy during the summer and did not want to do it, but eventually I did it the day before they school year started and learned nothing because it was boring and I wanted to get it over with. However, if the assignment was to research anything I wanted about psychology, perhaps it could have turned out like my 7th grade Latin assignment and I would've actually learned something. From personal experience I can say that the best way to combat an apathetic student is to gain their interest somehow, which could be done by allowing them the freedom to design their own project. For example, I loved reading

Frankenstein in English, but after having to write so much about it I no longer like it and don't really remember much of what happened.

Even if a subject is interesting, the desire to do a project on it can be crushed by the formatting of the project. Allowing students to do whatever format they want could make students gain interest and want to learn more about a subject compared to doing something they don't want, like writing an essay, which may make them harbor resentment toward the subject instead.

If a school decides to assign a summer project, the students should be the ones to design them, which shows that there are many ways people learn. By understanding that some children need to be taught in different ways, people can better educate the youth of America. Improving the way the people are educated can give society more informed citizens who are confident in their abilities and work better and smarter. 