By being allowed to design their own summer projects, students are afforded significantly many more opportunities to learn outside of the classroom and are also able to accomplish their project with a degree of flexibility, letting them both enjoy their time off but also retain information that they learned the previous year.

Many students have quite the chaotic schedule during the summer months. Between jobs, internships, and trying to enjoy their time away from school, it's easy for teacher-assigned work to get tossed by the wayside during this time. Additionally, for some people it is difficult to do things like hop online and complete lessons or sit down with a calculator and figure out equations, since their schedules simply don't allow it. This can be a problem for anyone who participates in programs such as Outward Bound or those who will spend a few weeks in another country on vacation or in the middle of nowhere building houses with their church.

By letting their summer work be student-driven, kids will be able to adapt their commitments to their teacher's desire to have them continue their learning over the break and not have to worry about finishing assignments by deadlines that they already know aren't possible for them to meet. For example, if a student is going to Latin America over the summer, instead of having them mindlessly conjugate verbs on worksheets to submit for their Spanish class, they can actually put what they learned to use out in the world by talking with locals or taking in the culture through music and food. If another student doesn't happen to have a passport and a couple thousand dollars lying around, they can adjust it to their situation, for example going to a local Latin grocery store and buying ingreedients in Spanish in order to make a native dish.

However, the opportunities extend beyond just languages and cultures. If a student is interning at a company in a different city, they have to learn a variety of skills, one of which being how to budget correctly. Here, they can employ what they learned in their math class in order to help them out with their finances by figuring out how much things will cost and what percentages of their money will have to go to which necessity. Again, this applies to everyone, as students who don't have that opportunity still get the chance to apply their math abilities to their own lives, as they might want to figure out how to divide up their paychecks from their summer job between spending and saving money.

These examples highlight another main benefit of letting students design their own summer projects, that being the increased opportunities that are availible outside of the classroom. Instead of having one general project assigned by the teacher that is monotonus and isn't any different than regular school, students can customize their learning to their specific situation and access things that aren't availible inside the classroom. Students that are interested in making music can apply for internships at music studios that have nicer equipment than their school. Students that enjoy writing can work with local journalists and get a feel for what writing is like for a bigger publication than just their school paper.

One might be thinking at this point, "Come on now. This is great for all the kids who are motivated to learn and are enough of a go-getter to go out and do this stuff, but what about the ones who just want to sit inside and play video games or hang out with their friends?" This is where the real beauty of student-designed work comes in. Even those who don't want to have to sacrifice their precious three months of freedom can still get in valuable time applying what they learned the previous school year. Spend your summer days inside playing video games? Calculate your win rate or determine your average time taken to complete certain levels. Prefer to hang out with your buddies at the pool all day? Determie your arc in the air doing different tricks off the diving board. The ability to adapt one's schedule to their situation is infinitely better than doing some general assignment handed out by a teacher, for all types of people.

If students can create their own project that is specific to their life over the summer, then they are accomplishing several goals. It allows them to actually get the work done, instead of being unable to do so based off of their schedule. It lets them be interested in their learning instead of complaining about a boring stack of worksheets that that have to robotically complete. Most importantly, however, it gives them the chance to experience things outside of the classroom that are both personalized to their lives and also accomplishing their teacher's goal of getting them to continue to learn information, ensuring that student-designed projects present the best of both worlds.