“Wait, Dr. Wells doesn’t have a doctorate?” asked one shocked Pascack Valley High School student.
At PV, “Mr.” Wells does not exist. Even principal John Puccio refers to PV substitute teacher Steve Wells as “Doctor.” This famous nickname began during Wells’s first year substitute teaching.
“[In 2017], students were watching the TV series ‘The Flash’, and there’s a character who happens to be a villain named Doctor Wells, and [the students] thought it would be cute to co-opt that name and call me doctor,” said Wells. “I mean, it doesn’t bother me; I just call everyone else doctor. If they wanna play ball that way, I’ll play ball that way.”
Wells held true to that statement, repeatedly referring to people as “doctor” for the rest of the interview.
Fitting a doctorate into Wells’s incredibly eventful life would be nearly impossible. From writing for the New York Times to working in the theater industry with big-name writers, Wells has done it all.
“For about the five or six years before [substituting] I’d been doing independent counseling and admissions counseling for college,” said Wells. “I was looking for something to fill the time of my days… and it just seemed like a logical choice.”
Wells is a member of the New Jersey Association for College Admission Counseling (NJACAC) and has his own business called CollegeConsult, an affordable college counseling business that “is here to help you navigate the college admissions process with focus and confidence from day one.”
Working with students wasn’t new to Wells when he joined the PV community, and that’s partly why he’s so great at connecting with his students.
“He does have an impact, Dr. Wells, on our kids, and I’ve received feedback that they love Dr. Wells,” said Puccio.
Wells fits into the PV community perfectly, but he didn’t have the same feelings of fitting in during his own high school experience.
“I went to a, God help me, I went to an all-boys school in Long Island,” said Wells. “I would never recommend anybody go to a same-sex high school. It [stunted] my social development for several years.”
Although Wells didn’t enjoy attending his high school, it was there that his love for theater began.
“[I] was mainly obsessed with Broadway theater [in high school] and seeing everything I could and learning as much as I could about the industry,” Wells said.
“I would write [theater] reviews, whether they were going to be published in the school newspaper or not,” the University of Virginia (UVA) graduate added. “I would write reviews of everything I saw, and, in college, I did that for three years, and it was a lot of fun.”
In his senior year of college, Wells was the 1972-73 editor-in-chief of The Cavalier Daily, the student-run UVA newspaper. Although not much can be found of his college work, three articles are available that he wrote as an alumnus.
One of his alumni articles, published in 2012, titled “Re-coding honor” discusses corruption in university figures and board members. The article exemplifies Wells’s strong will and zero tolerance for nonsense that is ever-present in his substituting.
His love for writing these articles carried into his post-college and working life, but, right after college, he focused on his other passion: the theater.
“The bulk of my career was spent producing theater in New York and then producing television in Los Angeles,” said Wells.
In the late 1970s, Wells worked with a well-known playwright and lyricist on multiple projects in New York.
“My early career partner was Howard Ashman, who wrote ‘Little Shop of Horrors,’ and he and I [along with other partners] founded a theater together which was [where] ‘Little Shop [of Horrors]’ started,” said Wells. “I was [also] involved in producing two of his other plays before he did ‘Little Shop [of Horrors].’”
Howard Ashman worked on many famous projects, including “The Little Mermaid,” “Beauty and the Beast,” and more. Wells worked with Ashman in New York, and helped to produce two productions.
“There was the musical based on Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’ called ‘DreamStuff,’ which audiences loved and critics thought tampered with Shakespeare too much,” said Wells. “We did that in an off-Broadway theater.”
“Then, the play that [Ashman] wrote, mostly autobiographical, called ‘The Confirmation,’ which we put together and did it [at] McCarter [in Princeton, NJ] [and] Annenberg in Philadelphia,” Wells added.
Wells also helped found the aforementioned WPA theater. Now gone, the WPA was “a mainstay of New York’s Off-Off-Broadway scene.”
Wells then moved on to work in television in LA.
“I like to say I moved out there [to LA] to save my bank account, and I moved back to save my soul,” said Wells.
Wells went on to write for the New York Times from 2003 to 2009. He continued his love for drama through writing theater reviews, as he had done in high school and college. Unlike those published in The Cavalier Daily, many of his articles for the New York Times are available online—including but not limited to critical and complimentary theater reviews.
His work at the NYT slowly came to an end during job cuts in 2008. Afterwards, he moved to north New Jersey and began his time working at PV.
Now, Wells has found the time to continue his passions and work on his latest project.
“[While substituting] I can work on other stuff I have, such as a memoir about the Broadway theater that I just wrote and completed,” said Wells. “Theater is my main passion, and I just thought there were a lot of colorful experiences that I had that might be worth putting down on paper, and I want[ed] to do it mainly so my sons would have something. But, now the feedback I’m getting is [that] I should publish it.”
Wells has successfully written his memoir while simultaneously having a vast, positive impact on the students of PV. In October of 2021, Ben Carter—PVHS class of 2022—was inspired to dress up as Wells for Carter’s senior year Halloween costume.
“There was a senior who thought it’d be cute to dress up for Halloween like me,” Wells said. “He came as Dr. Wells and damn if he didn’t win the best costume award.”
Carter won Best Individual and Best Overall Costume for his ‘Dr.’ Wells outfit.
“I was like, ‘You’re really doing this?’ and he was like, ‘I’m gonna bring it home for us,’” Wells said when recounting their conversation on Halloween.
Carter said dressing as Wells was an easy choice.
“[‘Dr.’ Wells] is a PV legend, and most people… easily recognize[d] my costume despite [my] looking nothing like him,” Carter said.
Carter carried a Diet Pepsi around the school the whole day to represent Wells’s well-known love for the drink. In fact, one teacher, Courtney Rems, bought him his favorite drink in appreciation of his service at PV.
“Dr. Rems [Mrs. Rems] even left a 6-pack for me on her desk… because she knew I’d be covering her two-day absence, which… both made me smile and quenched my thirst, so I am indebted to her,” said Wells.
It’s not uncommon for teachers and students alike to greet Wells in the halls or go as far as to get him gifts like Rems did. Wells is an approachable figure for students, so much so that as I was conducting the interview, numerous students from all different grades felt inclined to greet their favorite substitute, ‘Dr.’ Wells as they walked through the halls.
Wells would then reply with a witty, satirical joke as the students continued down the hall.
At the end of the interview, Wells gave me advice about college and life.
“Believe in yourself and follow your passions. When it comes to college, don’t go for false values, go where your heart is,” said Wells. “It’s four years of your life, and you want to do your best work, and you’re not going to be able to if you’re not happy. Go where you feel you belong.”
