Many schools across the country require students to complete summer assignments to assure that they continue their pursuit of knowledge even without a teacher present. But should these assignments be designed by the teacher or should they be designed by the student? If a student were given freedom with their project, it would be a lot more enjoyable rather than if a teacher put strict conditions on it. But a lack of strictness would mean that students are less likely to complete their project and they wouldn't know when the work they have done is enough. Teachers should put that restriction on the student and give them a specific assignment to ensure that the appropriate amount of work gets done.

Students are less likely to complete a project that they have freedom on and if they do complete it, the quality would suffer greatly compared to if a teacher gave them a prompt or a specific task to accomplish. The point of a summer assignment is to prevent to student from losing knowledge or getting rusty because of a break. Although the point of the summer break is to let students relax until the next year starts, it's still important that they keep their studies up. Assignments shouldn' be student-designed because that would allow too much leisure and when school comes around, most students would not have it done. For example, I had two summer assignments last summer. One was for English and one was for Math. For the English one, the assignment was to read any book of my choosing and write a review about it. This assignment had very unclear instructions and I, the student, was supposed to add my own twist to it and complete the assignment however I wanted to. I started on the assignment, but never finished it because I didn't have the motive since there was no specific prompt to answer to, so I wrote a couple of sentences and called it quits. But for the Math assignment, I had a packet to complete of practice problems. The finish was in sight and crystal clear. I did it throughout the summer and finished it by August. The reassurance I felt that once I did a specific amount of work and followed the teacher's directions, I would be done is what encouraged me to finish. The English assignment was unclear and I didn't know how much to complete to make sure that I was on track for next year.

Summer assignments are important for a student and the reason to have them teacher-designed is to give the student reassurance and to make sure the student doesn't do too much work over what's supposed to be a break, yet it keeps them on track. If an assignment is student-designed then the student will do one of three things: overwork themselves, not fully apply their capabilities, or not do the work at all. For these reasons, summer assignments should all be teacher-designed.