The Superteacher Project

Seventh grader Oliver Zahn and his best friend Nathan Popova delight in unleashing pranks on their unsuspecting peers at Brightling Middle School, but their new teacher, Mr. Aidact, keeps foiling them by uncannily determining who is responsible for pranks like riding a Big Wheel through the school during the Halloween dance. Mr. Aidact is not only a great detective; he has encyclopedic knowledge of every preteen obsession (like rap music) and coaches the fledgling girls’ ball hockey team to their best season while becoming the most popular teacher in school in the process. Suspicious, Oliver and Nathan follow Mr. Aidact and his “student teacher”, Mr. Perkins, to an apartment where they discover the teacher is really an experimental artificial intelligence machine assigned to their school by the federal department of education. When the truth comes out, Brightling’s parents are up in arms, and the project is cancelled. With Mr. Aidact scheduled to be decommissioned and dismantled, Oliver and Nathan conspire with their classmates to set him free, but not until Brightling wins the ball hockey championship in one last triumphant game.

Canadian-raised Gordon Korman continues his winning streak of high-octane, character-driven, kid-centric and uncannily topical novels with a book looking at the not-too-distant future of AI in education.

As ever, Korman’s characters are vivid, from devil-may-care Oliver to cautious Nathan, from awkward Steinke (aka Stinky) for whom Mr. Aidact is his idol, to confident Rosalie, who goes from reluctant to enthusiastic ball hockey player and whose admiration for Mr. Aidact can’t hide her dismay at her recently divorced mother’s crush on the android. Hilarious jokes abound, from Rosalie’s mother’s failed attempt at selling FLAXPLOSION bars for the school fundraiser to Mr. Aidact’s belting out “We Are The Champions” from the roof of his car after being kicked out of coaching a game for arguing with the referee. The final rush to get Mr. Aidact to the bus on time after the championship game goes into overtime, involving a tall student playing decoy in Mr. Aidact’s coaching jacket, is a perfect coda.

The chapter pattern alternates among the viewpoints of several characters, including Mr. Perkins and the school’s principal, whose narrative is carefully crafted to avoid revealing what the reader doesn’t yet know about the android teacher. Interspersed throughout are Perkins’ reports to Washington, including hilarious Special Expenses entries like dry cleaning (after he is caught in a food fight), not to mention moving expenses back to DC. The AI theme is particularly current given recent events, and the story is clear to present the ways in which Mr. Aidact’s “machine learning” is constantly evolving to be less a teacher and more a peer to the students, much to Perkins’ dismay. Although he is presented as somewhat human, it is clear that the technology is uncontrollable, and there is a slight hint of ambivalence in the kids at helping him escape.

A few small details don’t fully add up. When Oliver and Nathan discover the truth, it is unclear why they try to hide it, their supposed reasons ranging from possibly using it as leverage if the principal discovers they are responsible for a missing trophy, to not wanting to fight the US government. Once Perkins (who is really a government engineer) shuts down the program, it is unclear why Mr. Aidact remains at the school until the end of the week (and the hockey game). And when Oliver and Nathan track down the pair using the many local Perkins listings, it seems far too easy, not to mention why Perkins would have a listing under his real name. And while the revelation is well executed, the story lingers so long on the buildup that most readers will have long since figured it out. Nonetheless, The Superteacher Project is undoubtedly up there with Korman’s finest and will likely spark many classroom conversations about AI.