St. Charles art teacher blossomed in D303, now sowing seeds of next generation

St. Charles native and high school art teacher Stephanie Dodd’s artistic journey brought her to the other side of the globe and back home to foster the next generation of artists.

Dodd credits the St. Charles art teachers she had growing up for inspiring her career as an artist and motivating her to pass that on, a feeling shared mutually with one of her own students.

Dodd is an art teacher, chair of the fine arts department and assistant soccer coach at St. Charles North High School. She holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Iowa and a Master of Fine Arts from the Savannah College of Art and Design.

She grew up in St. Charles and graduated from St. Charles High School with a passion for art from a young age. She credits her “fantastic high school art teachers” with nurturing her talents.

While in high school, Dodd also played on the soccer team that won four state championships, and she continued to play at Iowa.

After college, Dodd wanted to go abroad and hone her craft before grad school. She thought of teaching as a means to support her early artistic career.

“I thought, ‘I had a really great art teacher. I could totally be her,’ ” Dodd said.

While she was focused on her art, it ultimately was Dodd’s soccer career that opened the door for her to start teaching. She was offered her first teaching job at a private international school in the Philippines on the condition that she would coach the school’s soccer team.

She went with the intention of teaching for only a few years while creating a body of artwork and pursuing a career as an artist.

After about five years, Dodd returned to the U.S. to attend graduate school. While working at a gallery in New York City for one of her favorite artists as she pursued her MFA, she was offered a job as a gallery manager.

Dodd’s initial reaction was that she just got her break and her art career was about to begin. She said that after thinking about it, she realized her time abroad was the happiest of her life and that teaching was what she was meant to do.

“It was like a no-brainer. I knew [teaching] was where I was happiest,” Dodd said. “At first, I didn’t know exactly why it made me so happy, but after about five years of maturing in the role, I realized it was the connections I made with the kids.”

Dodd returned to the Philippines, where she would teach and coach for another decade.

Over the course of 15 years at the international school, Dodd taught each grade level from K-12 and coached the varsity high school soccer team the entire time. During her last several years in the Philippines, she also worked as a commissioned artist, creating and selling her work to locals and other expatriates.

In 2017, she moved back to St. Charles and began teaching in St. Charles School District 303. She taught one year at Larkin Elementary School and has been teaching art and coaching soccer at St. Charles North High School since 2018.

Dodd said it was an interesting experience coming back to teach at her alma mater, where several of her former teachers suddenly were her colleagues.

“It made me realize what a special place this was for me growing up and how it fostered a lot of the things that brought me into my adulthood,” Dodd said. “I feel very fortunate that I can do the same for students who basically were just like me 20-plus years ago.”

Dodd is not likely to be the last artist out of District 303 who uses their talents to foster the next generation as one budding artist – a student of Dodd’s – already is considering a similar career path.

St. Charles North High School senior Simone Wright’s artwork has accumulated numerous awards and accolades during her high school career, and she recently became the first North student to receive a full-ride scholarship to art school.

Wright will attend the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, where she plans to pursue a career as an art teacher.

Wright has known Dodd since she started taking art classes in high school, but she had her as a teacher for the first time during her junior year. Since then, Wright has taken four art classes with Dodd and has taken 17 of the program’s 21 classes.

Wright has been drawing since she was 3 years old and said she always knew she would be an artist. Her go-to mediums are digital painting and traditional mixed media, using colored pencils and acrylic paint.

“She’s honestly one of the best teachers I’ve ever had,” Wright said of Dodd. “Some of the best advice I’ve gotten was from her, and she’s very personable outside of her teaching. I feel like I can tell her pretty much anything that’s going on in school or outside of school. She’s generally just a very positive figure in my life.”

Wright said she thinks most students would describe Dodd as extremely funny, nice, kind and open. She said Dodd has been the “safe person” that she and other students can talk to about their problems.

“Anyone who wants to be an art teacher would definitely look up to Ms. Dodd as a figure of what a teacher should be,” Wright said.

Dodd said her favorite classes are studio days, when the students are working on their projects, because she has the opportunity to talk to everyone individually. She said creating positive relationships with her students is especially important as an art teacher because they’ll listen to her feedback and critiques knowing they come from a positive place.

Although Dodd thinks of herself as an artist and teacher first, she said she couldn’t imagine not coaching.

“Soccer has always been a very big part of my life and I can’t imagine not coaching,” Dodd said. “It’s such a different relationship that you have with the students. It’s not like the authoritative classroom teacher. You really get to know them in a different way and help them reach these goals. I really enjoy being able to be a positive motivator in that way.”

Dodd said the fine arts department affects almost one-fourth of the student population each year, many of whom have vastly different levels of experience with art coming in. She said some are very experienced creators and others haven’t had an art class since elementary school.

Dodd said although it sometimes feels like teaching 24 different lessons to one class of students, she wants them all to feel like successful artists when they finish a class, and for every student to find something that they love doing.

“If you love the content of what you’re teaching, it doesn’t always feel like work. It’s enjoyable, and I love that I can share my passion for art with kids,” Dodd said. ”I don’t care whether or not they become an artist, but [I care] that they feel that they have a way to understand, enjoy and appreciate art for the rest of their lives."