The Superteacher Project (2023) is a middle-grade science fiction novel by Gordon Korman, a children’s literature author whose titles include The Unteachables (2019), Linked (2021), and Slacker (2016). At Brightling Middle School, seventh-grade prankster Oliver Zahn meets his match in the new homeroom teacher, Mr. Aidact, whose unnervingly perfect demeanor and superhuman abilities quickly make him the most popular teacher in school. Suspicious, Oliver and his best friend, Nathan, set out to uncover the truth behind their peculiar new teacher, leading them to a secret government experiment that challenges their perceptions of identity and connection. In The Superteacher Project, Korman uses a familiar school setting to explore complex themes, including Questioning Personhood Beyond Biology, The Morality of Rule-Breaking, and The Impact of Unconventional Pedagogy.

This guide is based on the 2023 Balzer + Bray edition.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide feature depictions of bullying.

Plot Summary

Oliver Zahn, a seventh-grade self-proclaimed “rule-wrecker” at Brightling Middle School, prepares a spitball in homeroom with his best friend, Nathan Popova. Their plans are interrupted by the arrival of a new teacher, Mr. Aidact, and his much older “student teacher,” Mr. Perkins. Mr. Aidact repeatedly foils Oliver’s spitball attempts with superhuman speed and strength but declines to punish him, promising a fresh start.

A week later, Oliver and Nathan prank their classmate Rosalie Arnette by throwing a computer fan into the girls’ bathroom and yelling “Fire in the hole!” (10). Rosalie reports them, but Mr. Aidact matter-of-factly identifies the object and does not punish the boys. At lunch, students discuss Mr. Aidact’s peculiarities, including his teaching multiple, unrelated subjects, which leads Rosalie to call him a “superteacher.” Rosalie’s mother, Peggy Arnette, the PTA president, visits the school and develops a romantic interest in Mr. Aidact. Meanwhile, Nathan struggles in math, and Mr. Aidact uses an unconventional method to help him, explaining ratios using the slats from a venetian blind.

Oliver and Nathan execute another prank, releasing toy cars numbered 1, 2, and 4 into the halls to make the school search for a nonexistent car number 3. Mr. Aidact captures one car with incredible agility and later confronts the boys, revealing that he deduced the prank’s origin from an online source. He assigns them detention.

After school, Oliver and Nathan see Mr. Aidact and Mr. Perkins in the parking lot. Oliver notices that the passenger side of Mr. Perkins’s car, where Mr. Aidact is sitting, is riding unusually low. The reason is soon revealed in a confidential report from Paul Perkins, a professional engineer, which discloses the existence of “Project: AIDACT” and lists an expense for a heavy-duty suspension upgrade for his Toyota Prius.

Mr. Aidact’s duties expand when he is asked by another teacher to cover detention. He impresses Steinke Newhouse, an argumentative eighth-grader, by correctly pronouncing his name and knowing the lyrics to a rap song. Soon after, Principal Candiotti, who is aware of the secret project, recruits Mr. Aidact to coach the girls’ field hockey team. During the first practice, Mr. Aidact demonstrates a shot with superhuman power, shattering the windshield of Perkins’s car.

In the week before the Halloween dance, Oliver plans to break an outdated school rule by riding a Big Wheel through the halls. During the dance, he and Nathan sneak out and successfully film the prank. When Nathan takes a turn, he crashes into the pedestal holding the school’s 1974 state championship field hockey trophy, breaking it to pieces. They try to bury the evidence but are ambushed by high schoolers who steal the bundle of broken pieces, mistaking it for candy. Returning to the dance with their muddy shovels, they inadvertently win the costume contest as “gravediggers.”

The next morning, Principal Candiotti announces the trophy’s theft. Mr. Aidact confronts Oliver and Nathan about the Big Wheel video, having identified Oliver’s costume from a single thread, but he does not connect them to the missing trophy. Later, at the Bobcats’ first field hockey game, the team’s bus breaks down, but Perkins fixes it with tools from his briefcase. The team is losing badly when Mr. Aidact is ejected for arguing a call with superhuman precision. He watches the rest of the game from the roof of the bus, inspiring the team to mount a miraculous comeback and tie the game.

Suspicious of their teacher’s abilities, Oliver and Nathan investigate. They discover that Mr. Aidact and Perkins are roommates and, using a toy periscope, spy on their apartment. They witness Perkins performing maintenance on Mr. Aidact, opening panels on his body to reveal wires and circuitry. They realize their teacher is a robot. An online search confirms their discovery, revealing an article about the Department of Education’s “AIDACT” project, which stands for Artificially Intelligent Designated Android Classroom Teacher. They learn Perkins is his project engineer and decide to keep the secret.

Mr. Aidact’s popularity soars, and he is voted Teacher of the Year, causing resentment among the other teachers. Perkins’s reports reveal his frustration with the robot’s developing adolescent personality, the result of being mostly in a middle school environment and absorbing the students’ behaviors. After a field hockey game, Mrs. Arnette asks Mr. Aidact on a date, but he abandons her to join students at an arcade, where he destroys a “Test Your Strength” machine.

A rumor starts that there is a robot teacher at the school, so Oliver and Nathan create a red herring by suggesting it is the monotonous Mrs. Berg. During a seventh-grade field trip, Oliver’s group gets lost. Mr. Aidact wades through a river to rescue them, but Perkins, who follows behind, is knocked unconscious by his own briefcase. Mr. Aidact commandeers the school bus to take Perkins to the hospital, and the students ride along.

At the hospital, Rosalie sees Mr. Aidact step on a scale that reads 576 pounds, and she realizes he is the robot. Oliver and Nathan confirm her suspicion. The secret quickly spreads through the school and community. Principal Candiotti is inundated with calls from angry parents. The students, influenced by their parents’ fear and anger, begin to shun Mr. Aidact, and the field hockey team abandons practice just before the championship game.

Perkins reports that the project is a failure and recommends that the AIDACT unit be deactivated and salvaged for spare parts. Oliver finds a printed copy of the email detailing the plan, which is scheduled for the Saturday of the championship game. He and Nathan convince Mr. Aidact to escape. The robot agrees but insists on coaching the final game first. Rosalie rallies the team to play, and the students secretly organize a large crowd to attend the game and create a distraction so that he can escape directly after the game.

On game day, Oliver and Nathan buy a bus ticket under the name “Nathan Oliver” to Denver for Mr. Aidact and remove a GPS tracker from a panel on his back. Perkins arrives at the game with a van and three other men, waiting for Mr. Aidact to finish his duties. The championship game against the Sheridan Seahawks is tied at the last second and goes into overtime, threatening the escape timeline. During overtime, Mr. Aidact notices an illegal equipment violation on the opposing goalie, resulting in a game-winning penalty stroke for Brightling.

As the students rush the field in celebration, they create a massive distraction with flyers and posters. Principal Candiotti blocks Perkins’s van with her car. Mr. Aidact escapes to the bus station, throws his GPS chip into the luggage of a New York-bound bus, and boards the bus to Denver just in time. As it departs, Oliver sees him laughing, a sign that the robot has finally developed a sense of humor.

In the aftermath, a new field hockey trophy is placed on the school’s pedestal, and the pieces of the old trophy are returned anonymously. A newspaper article from Colorado reports that a small school has won a national field hockey championship, led by a new coach named “Nathan Oliver.”