THE NEW COOL: REVIEW AND GIVEAWAY

GIVEAWAY ENDED
THE NEW COOL

A Visionary Teacher, His FIRST Robotics Team, 

and the Ultimate Battle of Smarts

BY NEAL BASCOMB

ABOUT THE BOOK:

That Monday afternoon, in high-school gyms across America, kids were battling for the only glory American culture seems to want to dispense to the young these days: sports glory.  But at Dos Pueblos High School in Goleta, California, in a gear-cluttered classroom, a different type of “cool” was brewing.  A physics teacher with a dream – the first public high-school teacher ever to win a MacArthur Genius Award -- had rounded up a band of high-I.Q. students who wanted to put their technical know-how to work.  If you asked these brainiacs what the stakes were that first week of their project, they’d have told you it was all about winning a robotics competition – building the ultimate robot and prevailing in a machine-to-machine contest in front of 25,000 screaming fans at Atlanta’s Georgia Dome.
 
But for their mentor, Amir Abo-Shaeer, much more hung in the balance.
 
The fact was, Amir had in mind a different vision for education, one based not on rote learning -- on absorbing facts and figures -- but on active creation.  In his mind’s eye, he saw an even more robust academy within Dos Pueblos that would make science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) cool again, and he knew he was poised on the edge of making that dream a reality.  All he needed to get the necessary funding was one flashy win – a triumph that would firmly put his Engineering Academy at Dos Pueblos on the map.  He imagined that one day there would be a nation filled with such academies, and a new popular veneration for STEM – a “new cool” – that would return America to its former innovative glory.
 
It was a dream shared by Dean Kamen, a modern-day inventing wizard – often-called “the Edison of his time” – who’d concocted the very same FIRST Robotics Competition that had lured the kids at Dos Pueblos.  Kamen had created FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) nearly twenty years prior.  And now, with a participant alumni base approaching a million strong, he felt that awareness was about to hit critical mass. 
 
But before the Dos Pueblos D’Penguineers could do their part in bringing a new cool to America, they’d have to vanquish an intimidating lineup of “super-teams”– high-school technology goliaths that hailed from engineering hot spots such as Silicon Valley, Massachusetts’ Route 128 technology corridor, and Michigan’s auto-design belt.  Some of these teams were so good that winning wasn’t just hoped for every year, it was expected.
 
In The New Cool, Neal Bascomb manages to make even those who know little about – or are vaguely suspicious of – technology care passionately about a team of kids questing after a different kind of glory.  In these kids’ heartaches and headaches – and yes, high-five triumphs -- we glimpse the path not just to a new way of educating our youth but of honoring the crucial skills a society needs to prosper.  A new cool.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

NEAL BASCOMB has published a number of international and national bestsellers, including Higher, The Perfect Mile, Red Mutiny and Hunting Eichmann.  His books have been optioned for film, featured in several documentaries and translated in 10 languages.  He has also written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times. He and his wife and their two daughters make their home in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. To find out more about Neal Bascomb, see "The Relevant Facts" by going HERE on his website.
  
MY THOUGHTS/REVIEW: 
Neal Bascomb’s THE NEW COOL: A Visionary Teacher, His FIRST Robotics Team, and the Ultimate Battle of Smarts, is the perfect read for anyone who is tired of hearing about how terribly bad our American schools are. If you think our children’s education is hopeless due to mediocre teachers, apathetic students, and programs that don’t work, please read THE NEW COOL. This is the important story of a California high school engineering teacher, Amir Abo-Shaeer, and the exceptional interdisciplinary instruction he used at the Dos Pueblos Engineering Academy, a public high school, and the young people he transformed into successful students and future leaders.

Amir Abo-Shaeer, knew that in many schools, robotics was an extracurricular activity as there is rarely time to fit it into the prescribed state mandated curriculum, let alone find a capable instructor. Amir integrated all the elements that produce a successful education into his teaching so that he could include Robotics as part of his year-long course work. Approaching this almost like a sport, students used team work, cooperative groups, hands-on learning, technology, and most importantly problem solving to create their end result, a project fit to compete! The course work was tough and demanding but the students rose to the occasion because of the manner in which their teacher worked with them. You will find reading this book that you are amazed this doesn’t happen everywhere. You will probably ask yourself, why doesn’t it?*

As a caring, albeit tough, leader, Amir knew his program could not work without support. Dean Kamen, a genius inventor and millionaire, who worries that with all the major problems our world is facing, we desperately need our schools to offer premier courses in science and technology, becomes a supporter.  Kamen created the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Competition with a goal in mind to be able to show that being smart is “the new cool” and to motivate others to follow in this way. Here is the best reason to take away the stereotype of “geek” and make anyone who wants to be in a program like this, a team player, just like in sports.

At Dos Pueblos High School, the D’Penguineers, was Abo-Shaeer’s group of 31 high school seniors who were part of the engineering program. In THE NEW COOL we follow this particular group as they are motivated to create a winning robot even though it meant much hard work and not much experience. They brainstormed how to overcome their lack of experience and what needed to be done to come up with resources, and then what they needed to do with them in order to succeed! Neal Bascomb writes of a few of the students in more depth than others but I wish we could have gotten a lot more background on more of them. Chas, for instance, had a learning disability and yet didn’t let that hold him back. One of the students, Gabe, is a genius at programming but also faced problems at home as his father was dying. I think a little more about the real life characters would have made the book better for me perhaps because of being a teacher, or a mom, I just wanted to know how they fared and who they all were away from the classroom. I know that plays into their daily success or failure so very much. 

The robot that was the culmination of the students’ year in the academy worked and how they faired in the FIRST competition gives the story that bit of excitement to see how they perform. The academy is just the kind of educational system we need in our country and it surely doesn’t hurt when there are teachers like Amir Abo-Shaeer and sponsors who support like Dean Kamen. This is an important book for everyone but especially those who are interested in our educational goals for today and the future. I enjoyed the book and found it spot on and would highly recommend it.

…on a personal note:
*As a 37 year, now retired teacher myself, I can tell you several reasons why there aren‘t more programs like this when there should be. Over 15 years ago, I helped open a new elementary school where students were taught by a team of teachers using an integrated curriculum. Fourth and fifth graders in the same class worked in cooperative learning groups as well as independently to reach goals set for them, or goals they set themselves. I watched as children LOVED coming to school each day to learn about all their core subjects centered around one theme, for example one year we used “Tracks to Treks”. With their Social Studies covering American History from the explorers all the way through the pioneer days and beyond, we facilitated as they worked in areas of reading, math, science, language arts, and more all built around the theme. 

Our “little engineers” became PROBLEM SOLVERS! They didn’t complain that they “couldn’t do something” because they knew that was never the case as they were "all aboard for learning". They found ways to work things out. These students were with us for two years upon entering from fourth grade and we watched their progress through middle school  and as they became the best class to ever graduate from our International Baccalaureate and Advanced Placement Program high school. Many of these young adults came back over the years to report about their exciting and meaningful lives, and we watched them become successful members of our society. They were my finest years of teaching. However, in a span of 5 years, things started to change as from the top on down to the “lowly” teacher, we had accountability drilled into us in standardized testing in every way, shape and form. We were forced to give up integral parts of our program and before long, I watched as the love of learning went out of most of my students as the pressure of testing was forced upon them. All this said, relates to what Amir Abo-Shaeer has been doing with students. Using these integrated problem solving techniques, his students are showing how schools can be transformed and how all kinds of students can be successful as I can personally attest to.

GIVEAWAY

THANKS TO JULIE AT CROWN PUBLISHING,
AND RANDOM HOUSE, I HAVE ONE BRAND 
NEW HARDBACK COPY FOR A LUCKY WINNER!

 

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