As a student grows and moves futher through there educational career, more and more work will be assigned over the summer.

Durring the summer you are between years and may not know who your teachers are.

This also means that the teachers may not know who their students are.

Because of this, summer projects should be student designed, students can adress what areas they need the extra practice in, have a choice in what they learn, and tey can emprove their learning by doing something they love.

Each student may ave an easier time on one subject over another, the further through schooling a student is the more apparnt this becomes.

Take me and my sister for example, I have a very difficult time in english and history due to the way they are tested apon.

I have a difficult time with tests where there may be more than one right answer in a multiple choice senario.

Finding the one question that is 100% accurate vs. being 75% or 50% accurate is difficult for me.

Thats why I can excell in mathmatics and the sciences, there is only one right answer.

On the other hand my sister is the opposite.

She does extreemly well in history and english and has a difficult time in math and science.

This is evident in every person you will ever incounter.

Each learns, remembers, and thinks differently from the next.

Therefore, teachers, who have never met the students they are assigning work to, should not have a part in a students summer learning.

My class may end up with alot of math practices and very little history, this will help my sister greatly improve her math but I will still be behind on this history while others may be far ahead.

Many might argure that all students should get the same work so it is fair.

This is entirely unrealistic, it is not fair for me to get 2 pages of math and be able to finish it in five minutes while it take my sister three hours.

It is not fair that I dont recieve the help I need in history because my sisters needs were put above mine.

With this in mind think about what school is truly here to do for the young generations that pass through its system. Yes, school is here to encourage learing, but in its basic foundation school is here to prepare us for the future.

Take the book Educated by Tara Westover for example, Tara never went to public school and receved very minial education from her parents.

Thus when Tara entered the real world she struggled grealty.

School is here to take some of this struggle away.

By teaching students skills and trade aswell as math and english.

This is alother reason why summer asignments should be student designed.

By having assignments be student designed, they will learn to make choices.

In the real world you have to make hard decisions and stick with your choice.

In the real world you have to choose what you need to do over what you want to do.

In the real world you have to put in the effort and show that you care, even if you don't.

By giving students the choice of what they can work on, by leaving assignments open ended, it will teach them how to make good decisions for their future.

The level of openness can be decided dy the school if need be but what comes out should be 100% the students idea.

With the freedom to choose what they learn based on their own needs they will get the best education posible.

Every person on earth learns significantly better when they enjoy what they are doing.

Even me, who does not like history can learn it.

I have traviled all over Asia and even lived in Japan.

I lived on a small southern Japanese island called Okinawa.

While I was ther I envested my self into learing everything I could about my home.

Me who is terrible at history can tell you the histroy of Okinawa back a thousand years to when the Ryuku Kingdom was flourishing.

The only push I needed to be able to learn a difficult subject was enjoyment.

When someone enjoys what they are learning and can connect with it they will learn much faster and much more.

By alowing students to control their summer assignments they can learn these difficult topics in a way they enjoy. They may also take a new vew on something, see something from another persons perspective, or find that they love a subject more than they previously thought.

Maybe its through watching historicaly accurate movies like, Hacksaw Ridge, D-Day, Midway, or War Horse.

Maybe it is through fun math riddles and compitions.

Maybe it is by spending the day with a granpa and hearing his accounts of the war.

You can also begin to foucus in or figure out what you want to spend your life doing.

My grandfather was a pilot and after years of hearing his and my mothers stories thats what I want to do.

I want to be a pilot like my grandfather and be in the military like my father.

I only want this because I have learned to love to travil from my parents and the military is where I grew up.

It is apart of me that has only been nourished by what I have been alowed to learn and experience outside of a closed classroom.

By allowing students to design their own summer learning the students will learn to chose what is best for them, adress their own needs, and enjoy what they are getting to learn.

This will open doors for students that may never close.

It introduces them to real world aplications of what they sit in a closed room learing for most of the year.

It can help students interact with others more, causing them to talk to people and make friends where they had non perviously.

Maybe it will incourage students to try something new, weather that be a new sport, type of art, instument, or to try and write a book.

Out of all of this its most siginificant effect is, it introduces students to the joy of learing, how the real world behaves, and exposes them to enumeral opprotunitys that will influence what the student will want to do with his/her life.

It turns the children that inter school in pre-k into adults.