Artemus Werts wants to address educational disparities
Shortly after graduation, Artemus Werts will travel to South Korea on a Fulbright Fellowship, where he’ll teach English to students for a year. Upon his return, he’ll have just enough time to repack his bags before leaving for Mississippi where a two-year position with Teach for America awaits him.
The posts are worlds apart – two vastly different systems on two ends of the educational spectrum. – and Werts believes gaining experience in both will help shape the teacher he wants to become.
“Korea has one of the world’s strongest primary and secondary school systems where the students are consistently ranked among the top 10 countries in the world in mathematics, science, and literary ability,” said Werts, who will graduate from the School of Arts and Sciences with a degree in history.
Werts plans to apply the lessons he learns in Korea to the classroom in Mississippi, which in 2008 was ranked last among the 50 states in academic achievement by the American Legislative Exchange Council's Report Card on Education.
“Whether it is the longer school year, teacher-centered classrooms, or the culture surrounding education, there is something valuable to be learned from the Korean educational system,” Werts said.
The challenges facing public schools in financially-strapped districts hit close to home. Werts grew up in Plainfield, N.J., and attended a public high school “riddled with violence, high teenage pregnancy rates, and an ill-equipped faculty,” he said.
After his first year, his parents decided to send him to a private Catholic school. The more rigorous, focused instruction, he said, made all the difference.
Graduating in the top 10 percent of this class, Werts received a full scholarship to Rutgers, while many of his former public school classmates entered the workplace in minimum wage jobs – a fact that gnawed at him and influenced his choice of profession.
“Education is something that should be equal and available to everyone. It shouldn’t be that just because people can afford [a better school district] they will have a greater opportunity to succeed in life,” he said.
Werts first saw parallels between the educational systems in Mississippi and Plainfield after seeing the documentary Lalee’s Kin. The story, which focuses on a family in one of the nation’s poorest counties, depicts the vicious cycle between poverty and the lack of educational opportunity. The documentary influenced Werts to take the Teach for America post in Mississippi, where he hopes to open his students’ eyes to their potential for success.
Werts also hopes to share a passion with his students that he found relatively late in his college career: great works of literature.
“My newfound appreciation for literature is one of the most valuable things I’ve gained from my Rutgers experience,” Werts said.
As a history major, Werts said, he read mainly historical works, until his African studies professor, Edward Ramsamy, encouraged him to broaden his literary world. Ramsamy told him to read Hard Times by Charles Dickens, in which one of characters reads only very serious works and grows unimaginative and cold. Werts began to read more fictional works and in the fall of 2009 and formed the club READ (Read, Engage, and Discuss), Rutgers’ first book discussion group.
READ started with 25 members, and has been growing steadily. The goal of the club is to facilitate the exchange of ideas and to create a community where people can engage in intellectual conversation.
“Learning shouldn’t just be taking place in the classroom, but also outside,” Werts said.