Many schools around the country design and assign summer projects for students to complete over the summer break. This is help students continue to learn and keep their brains active during summer break. Summer assignments also help students prepare for their incoming classes by learning concepts before the year starts. To better benefit the student, summer assignments should be teacher-designed because teachers have more knowledge of the course curriculum and many students need a teacher who can lead them through new concepts of the class.

Summer assignments are designed to help students maintain an active mind and prepare for their upcoming classes by learning course concepts before the school year starts. Teachers are trained for years to master the subject they are going to teach and mostly likely have already seen or learned the material in the class they are going teaching. Students do not know the course curriculum before they have taken the class. If the summer assignment was designed by the students, the assignment would not be as beneficially because students do not know what the curriculum of the class is.

For example, in classes I have always been give assignments created by my teachers. But, one class my teacher gave us an open ended project where students could create their own project using our ideas. All the kids in my class took weeks and even months to find an idea for their project. The students in my class had no idea what the teacher was looking for and how to correlate their ideas into the class curriculum. However, a teacher already knows the curriculum. This will allows for a more efficient and beneficial way of learning for the student because the teacher can create assignments they know is related to the course.

Not only do student not know the course concepts, students also do not have the skills to create assignments; students need a teacher leader to guide them through the new class. When learning a new concept, students can become overwhelmed if they do not understand the topics. At my school, some classes have very little guidance from teachers to help the students understand a new topic. My friends in these classes become very overwhelmed and become more apathetic to the class. Students do not understand how to learn a new without the guidance of a teacher. A teachers job is to create assignments, tests, and projects to lead their students towards mastering a concept. When teachers create assignments they are more involved with guiding their students. If summer assignments were student-designed there would be a lack of guidance compared to an assignment made from a teacher would have. This would causes students to inefficiently learn through summer assignments.

People who support student-designed summer assignments may argue that advanced placement (AP) classes require students to learn from textbooks without the guidance of a teacher so students do not need teacher guidance. But when taking a look at the students in these AP classes, on average students in AP classes struggle and receive poor grades in these classes. This is due to the lack of teacher leadership in these classes. Students in AP classes do not get enough guidance to fully understand the curriculum.

Summer assignments should be teacher-designed because teachers have more knowledge on the course curriculum and students need teacher guidance while learning new concepts. Summer assignments would be more effective if the teachers created the assignments themselves. Summer assignments that effectively teach students the curriculum over summer break will help benefit the students during the school year.