Oliver is the class clown of his seventh grade class. He is a master of the spitball, and when his new teacher shows up in homeroom, he is ready. He has his favorite launcher at the ready, plenty of paper to work into perfect spitballs, and his best friend Nathan to witness his genius. He takes his time with the spitball, making sure it’s just the perfect amount of wet, and then lining up his shot. As the new teacher bends over to look at something on the desk, Oliver prepares. But the new teacher, Mr. Aidact, is somehow even faster than Oliver and catches the perfect spitball right out of the air. Oliver realizes this is no ordinary teacher.
And it’s true that Mr. Aidact is no ordinary teacher. For one thing, he is followed around by an older man, Mr. Perkins, who he describes as his student teacher. And like the other teachers at Brightling Middle School, who all teach a single subject, Mr. Aidact teaches classes across several different subjects. Nathan is in his math class, and he struggles to understand ratios until one afternoon, when Mr. Aidact literally pulls the window blinds down to give Nathan a visible demonstration of what he is trying to teach. That is how Nathan finally understands ratios, and how he knows that Mr. Aidact is a teacher like he’s never known before.
Rosalie is a seventh grader who is already looking forward to college. She picks her classes with that in mind and works hard to keep her grades up. But she also thinks that field hockey will help pad her college applications. She’s not much of an athlete, but with Mr. Aidact coaching, she finds herself learning skills. But she struggles to understand the game itself, until their first real competition against another team. As Mr. Aidact fights for them against a bad call, Rosalie finds herself feeling like she’s part of a real team, and the chemistry between her and her teammates gels, and they find themselves scoring, and even maybe creating a chance to win.
But Mr. Aidact is far from a regular teacher. He takes over more and more of the other teachers’ activities, like watching over detention and the lunch room. His widespread knowledge of song lyrics and trivia make him popular with the students, and his ability to listen without judgment means that some of the outsiders find a friend in him as well. As his popularity grows with the students, the other teachers grow resentful of him, especially since they know the truth.
Mr. Aidact is not really a teacher. He is an experiment by the Department of Education to see how an artificial intelligence could handle teaching middle school students. The principal was honored that her school was chosen for the experiment, and while she could inform the other teachers, she was told not to inform the students or parents. She knows that if the parents found out, they would be angry.
But how would the students feel about it? Mr. Aidact is their teacher, their mentor, their coach, their friend.
It’s Oliver who sees it first, that their teacher is a robot. But what he decides to do with that information, well, that turns the school upside down and changes one teacher’s future forever.
The Superteacher Project is the latest novel from popular children’s author Gordon Korman, and it’s an amazing roller coaster of a good time. Looking at the possibility of an AI teacher, Korman gets into the heads of the middle schoolers, the colleagues, the principal, and the engineers and crafts an entertaining story that is also full of heart.
I loved The Superteacher Project. While it was interesting to see him interact with the environment, learning as he was going, I especially loved the unexpected issues that Perkins had to report to the Department of Education in his emails. This story is so fun but also so smart, and it will spark a lot of good conversations for middle schoolers. It’s told through many different perspectives, so readers can get a feel for what everyone is thinking, and it’s so easy to get caught up in what’s happening. I definitely recommend this one to anyone who wants to relive middle school, or to find out what it will be like in the near future.
Egalleys for The Superteacher Project were provided by HarperCollins Children’s Books (Balzer + Bray) through NetGalley, with many thanks.
