Ms. Pillsbury

Bio

My name is Drake Pillsbury and I am so excited to be your child’s teacher this year! This is my third year at James Denman Middle School, and my seventh year in the classroom. I was born in Cincinnati, OH and have lived all over the country (including Iowa, Arizona, and New Mexico) before settling in the Bay Area with my family. I have two kids of my own, a fifth grader at Rosa Parks Elementary and a eighth grader at Denman.

I have my B.A. in Human Ecology from College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, ME and received my M.A. in studio arts from Iowa State University in 2012. Following grad school I worked as a studio artist. I am also currently working on my MAT at University of San Francisco. When I am not teaching, raising my family, or doing homework, I am a practicing artist. My medium of choice is pastel, and I prefer to work at a large scale by creating street art.

I look forward to getting to know you all better this year!

For More Information about my classes visit my class webpage.

Teaching Philosophy

1. I see learning as a partnership between the students and I rather than myself as the deliverer of knowledge. Their voice is as important as my voice.

2. Learning is a process, this means that I do not see the first version of a an assignment that a learner gives me as the final version. I believe in revision and growth through in learning through the revision process.

3. In my teaching I focus on skills building rather then product. For this reason my grading is not divided by quizzes or classwork, but rather the individual skills that the learners are working on.

4. I see it as my goal as an educator to make connections across disciplines. I see all the disciplines as interconnected in that they are all ways that we as humans work to understand the world around us.

5. The last goal I have in my classroom is probably the most important to the learning environment, creating and maintaining a safe space in my classroom. All learning requires us to be vulnerable. We have to show our peers that we do not know everything and be okay with making mistakes in front of them and this requires a space to feel safe to do so in.