text: Teachers should design summer projects because they can prepare their students for their future classes. Although the students do not know the exact route that their education is going to take, teachers often have a very good idea. Teachers know what their students need to work on, and may be able to assign projects geared towards particular students to help them succeed in the future. This could be significantly more beneficial to the students than students arbitrarily choosing a form of assignment that is unlikely to improve their skills. A specific instance of a teacher assigning a helpful summer project would be if middle school students had decided to take research biology their freshman year of high school. A teacher could assign a summer assignment to these students because she would know that there are vastly increased expectations and responsibilities in high school biology compared to middle school science. The summer assignment could be crucial to help introduce the rising high school students to the formats and expectations of their new class.