I’m DDWells

A consultant, educator, marketer, writer, musician and follower of Jesus Christ dedicated to improving the conditions of Christian schools to influence more lives for Christ.

EXPERIENCES

From my earliest years I knew I was meant to help people. Not knowing what exactly that was going to be I began to pursue various activities from tutoring classmates to leading groups of people in worship. I found great pleasure in seeing other people’s success and development closer to their potential.

In my 26 years working in the education field I’ve taught everything from kindergarteners to adults, in private and Christian schools as well as public school and University settings. I have taught and advised college students in their development toward being future educators, mentored new teachers toward excellence, and receive great fulfillment in seeing their successes and their impact on student’s lives.

During my teaching and leadership experiences my spiritual gift of wisdom was revealed and developing that gift, my skills, and talents has been part of my lifelong journey. With the combination of the gift of wisdom, my experiences and skills, my ability to find creative solutions for very challenging problems became a real blessing to me and to those that I have worked with.

My three passions and gifts are influencing lives for Christ, helping people succeed and develop to their full potential, and discovering creative solutions to challenging problems. But my greatest reward is helping others to become better influencers in peoples lives for Christ.

One of the things I’m often asked is “How on earth did your get started in all this?”

GETTING STARTED

After being exposed at an early age to several high quality school programs and working in a couple of the same, I gained the background to know what it means to have a quality Christian education. Then again, early in my career I also worked in a Christian School that really struggled. It struggled with strength, with sustainability, struggled with integrity, reliability, loyalty, and effective leadership. It saddened my heart to see such an important ministry struggling in such a way and I was determined to be a part of the solution.

Over the years I’ve had numerous opportunities to take over programs that were struggling or in a downward spiral or even in complete failure. Fortunately, by the grace of God, hard work, and creative solutions I have been able to revive those programs and turn them into growing and thriving, effective organizations.

After repeatedly being put in this type of position I began to wonder what God had in store for me and my future. Why was I always being put in this position? Why couldn’t I take over an already established great program? Why couldn’t I join a school/program that wasn’t suffering, that was doing well and growing? Was God trying to show me something? Was I supposed to be working with only failing programs?

I began to wonder if God had bigger plans for me to be the kind of person that takes over struggling programs intentionally, and to help them turn things around, improve their situation, and begin a steady path toward growth, quality, and sustainability.

In one such case I took over the leadership of a very small Christian school that was in a downward spiral for more than twelve years. Enrollment was declining, the students hated their school, the parents were angry, and the faculty were fighting amongst themselves. Morale was at an all time low and I was handed a budget of NEGATIVE $270K!  All this was delivered to me at a time during the worst economy our country has seen since the Great Depression!

Fortunately, by God’s grace, hard work, the gift of wisdom, and creative solutions to challenging problems, we were able to stop the downward spiral. The year after year decrease in enrollment ceased almost immediately, and students once again began to love their school. The faculty became unified in our mission of influencing lives for Christ. The parents began to take ownership in the school and became more active and supportive including helping purchase and develop property for the church. The deficit budget was reduced by more than 60% in the first year. Enrollment began to grow by 8% per year and the faculty, student, and parent morale began to soar.

A CLEAR CALLING: THE TURNAROUND ARTIST

At the same time I began to read reports of Christian Schools across the nation closing at an alarming rate. This saddened me and touched my heart, because I knew their had to be a way to help save these schools. Why couldn’t I help these schools too? I had to find a way.

It was at that point that I wondered if I was being called to another Christian school to help turn around their downward spiral and negative experience. After the realization that it would take three to five years just to help one school, at that rate I would be quite limited in the number of schools I that I could actually help. There had to be a way I could help all these struggling schools to prevent them from closing and in turn have a bigger impact for the Kingdom.

My “aha” moment.

Finally the concept of active guidance, mentoring, and coaching for struggling Christian schools was born. By bringing my experiences of growth, revival, wisdom, and creative solutions to challenging problems, I could quickly expand my impact on so many more schools, and in turn help these schools influence so many more lives for Christ. And so I became the “turnaround artist” for Christian schools. It’s not a pretty name, and difficult to describe in a few words, but a highly important mission for our nation wide problem.

WHAT I DO

And so I am always looking for Christian Schools that need help, whether to reverse a downward spiral and save their school from closing, or help to improve the quality of their school, or to evaluate and restructure their marketing strategy to one specifically designed for Christian schools. Through mentoring and advising school leaders, to training parents and board members, to coaching faculty and full consultation services I provide the outcomes and solutions Christian schools need for growth, development, and sustainability into the future.

My goal is to dramatically improve the condition of Christian schools for quality, growth and sustainability while decreasing the challenges of conflict, inefficiencies, and negative undercurrents.