From WICOR to Workouts: Bringing AVID Strategies into Physical Education

What does AVID look like when learning moves beyond the traditional classroom and into the gym?

In this episode of The Road to an Effective Classroom Environment, Dr. Lashawnte sits down with physical education educator Dustin Woods to explore how AVID strategies can transform teaching and learning in physical education.

Dustin shares how he incorporates WICOR—Writing, Inquiry, Collaboration, Organization, and Reading—into a highly active, hands-on learning environment while maintaining the movement and engagement that make physical education unique.

The conversation challenges the misconception that rigorous instructional strategies belong only in traditional academic classrooms. From student reflection and collaboration to intentional questioning and student ownership, Dustin demonstrates how educators can make learning visible without sacrificing authentic, hands-on experiences.

Whether you teach PE, CTE, or a traditional academic subject, this episode offers practical ideas for creating classrooms where students don't simply participate—they understand what they're learning, why they're learning it, and what success looks like.

Because great instruction isn't defined by the classroom you're standing in.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome back to the Road to an Effective Classroom Environment. I am your host, Dr. LaCanta, known as that Classy Sassy Consultant. One of the things I continue to challenge educators to think about is good instruction, good instruction, regardless of the classroom. When we talk about strategies like writing, inquiry, collaboration, organization, reading, student discourse, learning information, reflections, we sometimes automatically picture English. We picture English, math, science, social studies. But what happens when we take those same principles into exam? Today we're going to go beyond the traditional academic classroom. My guest is Dustin Woods, a physical education and healthy lifestyles educator who presented at the Abbott Summer Institute in San Diego. His work challenges us to think differently about rigor, engagement, student ownership, and AVIC, and how Abbott can look what it looks like in a physical education class. Dustin is a middle school educator, department leader, and advocate for expanding the way schools think about literacy. With a background in physical education, health, strength and conditioning, and curriculum and instruction, his work focuses on proving that meaningful reading, writing, thinking, and communication belong in every classroom, not just in ELA. Through his Literacy in all spaces philosophy, Dustin explores practical and authentic ways to embed literacy into content areas where it has traditionally been overlooked, particularly in physical education. He is the author of rigorous literacy in physical education and has shared his work with educators through professional development, conferences, and other speaking opportunities. At the heart of his work is a simple belief. Literacy is not confined to a single subject. It is something every classroom should support by giving students opportunities to read, write, think, and communicate in meaningful ways. Welcome to the Road to the Pactive Classroom Environment, Dustin. Thank you for coming on the show.

SPEAKER_02 2:25

Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

SPEAKER_00 2:28

Yes, and I would I want to let our audience know that I was very moved by your speech. So I was one of thousands in the crowd just listening to you as well as the student speakers. But it was something about hearing from someone from your con your area from physical education. We had the conversation before we start before we started this, when we were just, you know, deciding, you know, what way we were going to go as far as the interview. And I said that, you know, I had, you know, coaches got on my nerves when I was in the classroom because they were not teaching the way I thought they should be teaching. So I have a love-hate relationship for coaches, but it was something about hearing you speak and and the passion that that was there. It was evident that you are in the right place. So I'm so thankful that you were able to join us today. And we're gonna look learn a little bit more about you. So just tell us a little bit more about who Dustin is. Who are you? And and basically, how did you find your way into physical education?

SPEAKER_02 3:39

Yeah, so interestingly enough, I think you and I share some very similar perspectives when it comes to, I don't want to say the entire physical education content area, but I, you know, right up front, I obviously love my content area and I love what it has the potential to do for our students. I just think there is a history of just comfort in the doing what we've always done in our content area without challenging ourselves to try something new or to try and reshape how it is we do things. And honestly, that is kind of the core of how I found my way into physical education. It goes all the way back to when I was in middle school and high school, where, like I said, you know, or shared at the Avid conference, I was a struggling student. Like I just nothing about school came easy for me. But there was always, always this part of me that tried. I think if if someone if we were to just look at my transcripts for middle school and high school and you just looked at what was on the paper, I think the visual that we might create for the student that you would see on the paper was very different than the one that was showing up into the classroom. All of my friends were all super successful, they were all really great students. I share it pretty openly with my students now. I struggled, I think my GPA peaked at about a 1.6, and that was usually pretty early on in the class when I had it had some of the habits I had set in. And my best friend, my best friend all the way through middle school and high school, was the third. He was he was the runner up to the valedictorian of our high school. So I cared a lot about wanting to be better right up until the day I graduated. I, if you would have asked me what my plan was for myself beyond school, I would have had one for you. I would have said, I would love to go to this college, I would love to study this content or to have this career, regardless of the fact that the results that I was creating as a student just didn't support it or to support that vision. Then I had this epiphany, this aha moment that unfortunately came honestly like mere months after I left high school where I discovered the weight room. I had made some goals for myself that all involved getting in shape physically, and so I was going into the gym every day, but realizing to progress towards some of the goals that I had in the weight room, I had to understand it more. Not just to be able to physically perform it, but I had to be able to understand what I would eventually identify as the science behind exercise. And so I started reading, I started, you know, studying these exercise science concepts like anatomy and kinesiology, biomechanics, and honestly, it was like an awakening, not just in that I had found this thing that I was passionate about. I've had a lot of educators when I've shared these stories and these experiences with, they said, Oh, you found your buy-in moment. And I didn't like that because it was more than just buy-in. The way I describe it was metacognitively, I came alive. These topics made sense to me, and not only did that drive my passion to learn and to study, but instantly, and I think this comes back to being so driven, even though I was struggling all throughout my secondary school experience, I was instantly able to recognize how I was learning and to be able to make that connection to say, Oh, it was I was 19 years old when I realized I'm a kinesthetic learner, first and foremost. I need to do to understand. I started to learn things that now as an educator, I'm like, oh, chunking, cool, like all these different things that we learn as educators when we go to study to become teachers. I started to recognize them as just an individual just trying to study on his own, which instantly brought me back to my high school experience where I took weightlifting three out of the four years in high school, but made none of these connections. And it sat with me. I just kept asking myself, and I said, like, I mean, another story I always tell with my students, especially in my strength and conditioning classes, I took weightlifting in high school because I desperately needed an A. And I knew that coach did not care. He was going to be in his office. He'd make his periodic walkthrough to make sure we're doing safely. And it was straight out of a sitcom. I would sit on that weight bench until I knew he was coming, and suddenly it was grab the bar and just A, nine, ten, just feigning this, like, I've been working so hard, coach. And he never asked a question.

SPEAKER_04 9:42

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 9:42

It's like, cool. My report card desperately needs an A, so I'm gonna take this. But then when I finally discovered this content area was not only a passion, but it helped me understand myself as a learner. I kept going back to that same question of what if he had challenged us differently? What if my physical education coach had asked me to do more than just do and had asked me to think what kind of doors that could have opened for me, and it stuck with me. And then eventually, I actually did go back to school, but it was not for education. I went back to school to become a firefighter because it was physical, it was it tied into all my habits, and then it was through the support of my wife, she said, Well, why don't you stay a little bit longer in school and get another degree? And why don't you consider teaching? I was like, that memory of my report cards kind of came back, and I was like, I don't know that like teaching's probably my job. Like, I my first stay in high school wasn't great. I don't know about a second stay. And then I remember attending just one of the general education courses where it was just kind of an intro to is this the right profession for you? And I it's it's it's a core memory. I remember sitting in that university classroom and hearing the educators say one word, differentiation, and it was from that moment. I was about 95% of the way through my firefighter degree, and I was like, I'm never setting foot in a firehouse. Like I am going to go back to the classroom because this concept matched up with everything I was kind of floating around in my head. I was like, no, this is this is what I need to do, and we are going to try our hardest to reshape kind of the experience that students have in PE.

SPEAKER_00 11:55

I love it. I love it. Just the change going from, you know, real life, you know, some people will not change and and shift gears. Um, and I'm not gonna try to date you. I try to do that to with one of my teachers. And uh I said, we we are in the same generation generation. I know we're not, but yeah, he was like, What are you saying? What are you talking about? So anyway, I'm not gonna try to date you right now, but you have those students now that are they're going through school and they don't mind changing and shifting gears. And and that can be a plus because why stay in something that you know that your heart is not in. So I have to applaud you for knowing when to shift and changing, changing gears. And I know that your students are so happy that you did that. Because I I would love to come to your classroom. Hopefully, uh, if if I begin some travel soon, I can travel and come to some of these classrooms that I know where there are some awesome things going on. I would love to see it in the um see you in action.

SPEAKER_02 13:00

I never close the door, it's always open.

SPEAKER_00 13:03

That's good to know. So, what do you want your students to understand about physical education that goes beyond just simply exercising or playing a sport? What is so tell me, what do you want students to understand about physical education that goes beyond simply exercising or playing a sport? What do you want your students to know and understand?

SPEAKER_02 14:13

I guess it in my like as a physical education teacher, or just taking and out, stepping out of my role as a PE teacher and just looking at the area of the content area of physical education, I think we put so much emphasis on that first word, the physical. But at the end of the day, those last two words, physical education, teacher, are the core words that should be our focus point. And I really do prefer my classroom to be it's not about the workouts, it's not about the sports, it's not about the fitness, it's about learning. Physical education is just the lens we do it through. And so, just like your math teachers trying to teach you certain things, and your ELA teachers are trying to teach you certain things. Everyone, as a whole, in a school or an education, is all about helping students learn and become better learners. That's what I want my students when they walk through the door of my classroom, and and I think they do, is they realize this isn't just about a game, this isn't just about an exercise, it's about learning, it's about becoming a better learner. And PE is just kind of the the lens we look at it through and we do it through. And you know, I always tell people like when people ask about my classroom, the top five percent of athletes, they're the ones that struggle in my class a little bit. Like they're the ones that there's usually an adaptation there where it's okay, it's not just about coming in and just being super athletic and dominating on the court. There's always that moment of hesitance where they say this isn't what PE is normally. Like this isn't what PE is supposed to be what it's supposed to be. And after a moment, you know, they find out the games, the sports, the activity. It's all still there. We're just trying to do a little bit more. And so I want them to become, I don't want them to just become better athletes or in better shape. I want them to become better learners. We're gonna write, we're gonna read, we're gonna do everything you do in your other classroom. Our movement and our and our PE focus is just going to be where those things are applied. There's usually a bit of a learning curve, and it I think it probably has more to do with how I present it than how they experience it. But eventually I think they get there and you start to see the light bulbs in the non-athletic kids where they say, This thing that I'm good at, my PE teacher sees it. And so I'm going to be more committed to learning and trying to grow in what he's doing and good at, which is the physical stuff. But then, more rooted for me in kind of my history and what I go to do is I love when the athletic kids, the ones who do typically view PE as just recess with a few more rules attached to it, they start embracing academic stuff with more enthusiasm. They start writing the really long papers because they're talking about something that they have something to say about. And so it's my classroom isn't just about moving, it's about it's not just go and do, it's go do and think.

SPEAKER_00 17:57

I love that. Teaching the students to know how to learn, how they learn. And it's not just about the activities, but you're helping them to see that they can learn, think, write, communicate effectively in PE. And I'm sure that you've gotten students who've come in and said, This is not English class, why we're doing all this writing. I've gotten that when, because I taught social studies, and in my class, we would read novels, things that were dealing with the law when I was teaching law education. So they wrote and they had to write in paragraphs and they had to write papers, and and I would have those that said, This is not English class. I said, but it is. You have to know how to communicate in here just as you communicate in in English. So I know that helping our students to identify how they learn in all aspects and every um every subject that helps them to be more of a well-rounded student.

SPEAKER_02 19:06

I think too. I think in my as I kind of this literacy and PE thing kind of like built and grew. I think there were some things that I learned along the way that was in some cases, I've I've been very blunt in presenting to them my thinking. In fact, in my classroom, that's a very large part of what I do, which is bringing the students in to my full thought process. Like, we're gonna learn about XYZ. Here's why. Like, even just short of almost teaching them how to be a teacher, like just helping them see like this is my thought process behind it. And where literacy into PE is concerned, I think that was was super beneficial. You know, at first, it always starts off with just getting them to embrace it. The the writing activities we do, the reading activities they do, they're they're less about the literacy standard structure. It's was more just about getting this to be a place where this type of work was accepted. And once students kind of saw that, they they they they kind of disconnected from some of the comparisons to ELA and just kind of dove into what we're doing. You started to see them enjoy it and started having more fun. I think it was as early as maybe a year or two ago, so about year seven in my teaching career. I kind of realized I said, okay, culturally at my schools, students know what to expect now. They accept it. Some of them are even excited about it. And that's when I started to shift it towards, okay, now it's not just doing it because it's fun and it's okay. Let's start trying to target the skills that they're struggling with elsewhere. When we had a sixth grade group that was really struggling with the idea of citing evidence, you know, from a text, it was okay. So, how can we do this in a PE setting in a way that helps the students see that? And it wasn't always reading a text and then citing the evidence. We did things like we watched a coach give a speech. And they said, Give me some evidence that this was an effective speech. How did you know this was an effective speech? Now, the kids, for the most part, they think they're just watching a cool sports movie, right? They're just thinking they're watching this old movie Hoosers, and instead, then when we flip it on them and we say, Okay, how do you know this worked? And the students would sit and they'd write, and they'd this is look at the way the players respond to yada yada. I said, guys, you're citing, you're citing evidence from the text. Like, what? That's something we do in the LA. I know, crazy, right? We just did it. Yeah, and I think I think that's why when I meet with physical education teachers, when I talk to even beyond PE, when I talk to other elective teachers, guys, students. What our contents do, our content areas do resonates with certain students. There are students who feel at home in a family and consumer science class or feel at home in the gym. And when you give them the opportunity to do those other High level thinking tasks in our environment, like what you are doing for that student in that moment goes far beyond helping them live a healthy lifestyle or teaching them how to cook a recipe. But they're doing those things too.

SPEAKER_03 23:05

Right.

SPEAKER_02 23:05

They come out of it going, yeah, I can cook things, but they made a greater connection that resonates far beyond our classrooms. It's too, it's too much of a power, of a superpower, to just ignore.

SPEAKER_00 23:18

Yeah. I agree. Fabulous. Fabulous. I just I love how your mind works. I love how it works. And I wish we could have where everyone who is in education can have that same that same enthusiasm and that same mindset of I'm gonna make what I do work for my students so that they can better understand who they are as learners. Anyway, you're about to leave me speechless, but I can't be speechless on the show. So I gotta keep going. I gotta keep going. All right, look, you have you have renewed my my faith in in coaches, physical education. You've renewed my faith.

SPEAKER_02 24:07

We still have we don't get too crazy though. We still have a lot of work. We still have a lot of work to do.

SPEAKER_00 24:13

And but you know, it it's always it's always um a great experience in talking with someone though that that gets it. You know, core content, we tend to get it. And many times we will get it for just our area, but to be able to to be a part of a content that is considered an an elective, but to make it still a it's still a core content is because you're you're doing what core content is doing, and you're making it relevant to the students. And so that's what matters. That is what education is all about, is making that impact. So I love it. So let's talk a little bit about Abbott and PE. So I was again floored when I heard for, you know, because anytime that you're at a conference and you're waiting to hear someone speak. Now, Abbott has never done this to me. Every Abbott conference I've been to, the speakers have been awesome, on point. You can tell that they live and breathe avid. And you know it's not just we're pitching this to you. You know, everyone that comes to these conferences, they're avid schools or they're in the process of being avid schools. And so to hear, to hear you speak about how you are using it in PE, when I heard physical education teacher, I was like, my ears perked up. I said, okay, let me step back and and and listen a little bit deeper. So when people hear Abbott, they often, you know, they they picture the note-taking strategies, the binders, the Socratic seminars, philosophical chairs. So what does Abbott actually look like in PE?

SPEAKER_02 26:06

So I have to, I wasn't sure how how deep we would go into the Avid aspect of things. So I'm really glad that we get to talk about this because not just because of the awesome experience I had in San Diego and just the lead up to that, but just so to go back a little bit to the time before ABIT Avid, when I started in PE with this vision that eventually became literacy in all spaces and all the work I do with Avid, what started it started as I wanted to, and this was oof, man, the way it would trigger certain PE teachers when they'd hear it, it would, and even administrators, it would scare them. My vision was making PE more academic. Just everyone would hear that and go, that doesn't compute. Like that doesn't, I don't understand it, it doesn't make sense. And I was still doing all of these things that were people would see it and they go, okay. I understand it now. It was when I found avid that I made the just almost as a matter of fact, matter of factly, made the connection literacy. So it was when I found Avid and started to work within the avid structure. That's when it shifted from being wanting to make PE more academic to oh, this is literacy. Like this is what I'm bringing into the this is literacy is the tool that I've been seeking for. And that's my reputation in my district with our avid, you know, district leaders and was in my school. It's I'm the wicker-obsessed PE teacher. Yeah, that wicker, that wicker blueprint. I read that's when I realized I was like, okay, writing, yes, and having them do tons of writing. Inquiry. Inquiry was the secret force that was driving so much of what I was trying to get them to do. Collaboration, check mark, organization, awesome reading. I was like, okay, this is it. This is what I've been trying to do for 10 years of my career. Here we are. And so honestly, the the the wicker or sorry, the avid influence in PE, it it pretty much it was like the perfect alignment with one another. Like I said, with using wicker autonomy, you know, student autonomy. Like I've grown over the years as I've as I've worked with other PE teachers, I realized how I mean the idea of teaching a student to live a healthier lifestyle sounds by definition like autonomy, but yet so much of what is happening in our classrooms doesn't match it. And so then here I was thinking, okay, so student autonomy, my weightlifting students, they don't come into my classroom to work out, they come into my classroom to learn how to train, they learn how to write a workout, they learn how to build a training program, and then the executing it stuff is just happens like naturally, and so excuse me, so avid was kind of in a way already happening in my classroom, and and but where avid helped so much was two things. One, it gave me names and kind of like structure to kind of say this is what we're doing, this is how we're laying it out. And when I realized it was the blueprint that I had been trying to build, everything was there. I just avid really helped me organize it to say this is how we're gonna make it effective. And this was something that man, three years at an avid school, years of looking at schools that I wanted to move to that coincidentally had Avid. And when I I had mentioned that in my speech, and I just want to go on record and say that wasn't an exaggeration for dramatic purposes whatsoever. My family had explored moving all across the country and you know to these different places, and the list of schools that I had in all these different places were avid schools, and I am embarrassed that like immediately I didn't go, hmm, what's the what's the common like what is this? But finally arriving into an avid school, I realized these avid kids, these kids that avid serves, that was the group I wanted to serve from the day I stepped foot into the classroom. And so Avid really helped me organize everything I was doing into a structure that allowed me as the teacher to really hone my craft into my goals. I it's funny, you you mentioned philosophical chairs, which is that's always the first thing I think of when I think of Avid, which there's a hundred things I probably could or should think about first, but philosophical chairs always comes to mind. I remember when I first attended an Avid Summer Institute in San Diego years prior to my speech, we were in a breakout session and we were talking about philosophical chairs, and I told a story of one of the first times I tried to implement higher-level thinking into my PE classes. It was an in-class debate during warmups about whether or not pro-football players make too much money. And we instantly broke out into this classroom debate. You're over here if you think they do, you're over here if you think they're paid justly. And we broke out into a philosophical chair without even having that be the gut the instructional technique that I was trying to use. And so they were walking us through philosophical chairs, and instantly I made that recollection where I was like, raised my hand in the conference. I was like, just to be clear, because we were in there with all electives, and I said, just so we're clear, this can absolutely be done in all of our classroom settings. At our school, we have the we have the uh the kind of what's the word I'm looking for here. We have that theme, that motto. There is the word I was looking for. We have that motto that if Coach D can do it in his PE class, no one else has any excuses. And so I said we can do these things in this class, we can run philosophical chairs, we can do World Cafe. Wicker will make your PE classes so much more well organized, the classroom management becomes easier, like they will become more engaged. It's not coming up with some new crazy game, it's about giving them purpose to be in the movement. And wicker checked all those boxes off, and so yeah, like I I the the phrase I always use is the wicker strategies look the same in PE. We're just moving around a lot more as they happen. That's the only difference. The thinking's still the same, the goal is still the same, the students are just moving around a lot more as it's happening.

SPEAKER_00 34:25

I love the fact that you the way that you phrased it, that you found out the avid is what you were already doing using those wicker strategies. When it's it's always great to find a name for what you're doing. I had the same epiphany when I went through some training for classroom management and got sort of certification in it. And when I was the first the first hour of the training, I realized this is what I'm all about building relationships, building the rapport, and making the material relevant to students. I said, this is this is it, this is the name for. Not that you need name, but it makes everything so much more organized when you can say, aha, I found what what fits, what is me. It has a name for it. So I love that you found that in in in Abbott because I grew to love Abbott. Being at an Abbott school uh in my district, I was at a middle school. And so we for the five years that I was there, I was helping with the driving force behind making sure that it was implemented in the classrooms with fidelity, help supporting the teachers in that. But now I get to put on my Avid lens with CTE, and which what brought me to San Diego was I was in that CTE community. So it's gonna be it's it's gonna be great implementing those strategies now in CTE because I have a love for for AVIT and and I see the relevance and I see how it works in all content areas, and so now I get to show the CTE teachers how it works in your area as well. So we're gonna be doing philosophical chairs in about two weeks.

SPEAKER_03 36:18

Love it.

SPEAKER_00 36:19

Looking at a recipe, uh it's a it's a French cuisine for faux bois. I can I'm I know I'm messing up this sound, but anyway, we did it in the CTE community and just the pros and cons of serving that for 50 people. So I'm excited to do it with the staff.

SPEAKER_02 36:40

So uh, you know, call me in the yeah, I think you you said it and it resonated so much. I just I think back to two times in my career when I first started hearing differentiation and hearing what that was and what that meant, that resonated because when I thought back to my secondary experience as a student, the only list of highlights that I had as a high school and middle school students all incorporated differentiation. So, like you said, putting that connection to putting a name to it, realizing, oh, that wasn't just a chance, that was a thing. And then as I entered into my teaching career, I think everyone, I want to give, I mean, man, I had some struggles where you know, interviewing and trying to present this vision for PE was rough. I want to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. You know, people were open-minded in hearing this strategy, if you will, towards physical education, this philosophy towards physical education. But man, when I entered into an avid school or when I started going to avid conferences and more sp most recently in June, when I got to go out and share my message, Avid was the first place in 10 years of teaching where I felt like I was at home. Like I had found I had found that the people who understood me and understood the vision and supported it, and it was extremely grateful for that.

SPEAKER_03 38:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:12

And so since you've brought up your message, and um, and again, it was a great, a great message to hear. And I wish that my listeners had an opportunity to be able to uh to hear that, but they have the opportunity of hearing you now and speaking, and hopefully they hear the passion that I heard this uh this summer. So in that in having that opportunity to present, what was that experience like for you? What what did what was your takeaway in being able to speak on such a grand stage in front of thousands of educators? What was that experience like for you?

SPEAKER_02 38:52

It was it was life-changing. I think it's pretty is pretty safe to say. I just think it was what amazed me first and foremost about it was like I had found out, I had received the news I was going to be speaking at the conference back in April. And for the listeners who made the speech was on June 30th, so I had a ton of time to sit with it, and there was just you know, I'm writing the speech, I'm rewriting it, like I think it ended up being roughly about 10 minutes, and I had about 25 minutes of things that I would have loved to say. So we were just working and you know, trying to get the message just where we wanted it, and the amount of career retrospect and reflection that I got to have throughout that process was worth it on its own. Like just to be able to reflect back and to realize so many things that have been right in front of me, why I connect so much with the students at the school I'm currently at. I realized it's because I was you. Like, how did this escape me? Like, and this was all reflection that was happening just because I was thinking about this message that I wanted to prepare. And then, man, let's let's hope this is not wishful thinking, and it's more of like a spoiler for where things can go for me in the next five to ten years of teaching or working in education. I think my post-classroom career, I kind of saw the path now and kind of the goals that I have and things that I want to do when I'm done having fun with middle schoolers, which may never come if I'm being quite honest with you, but just and then you know, I've had multiple teachers and districts and schools reach out to just be like, hey, we would really love to have our teachers with this level of excitement for what it is you're doing. How can you help us do that? It just it's been so awesome. I actually remember, and I thought this was really funny because it I was worried it was gonna start to distract me while I was giving the message and the speech. I could feel my phone. My phone was in my pocket, and I really wished I would have taken it out and set it on the chair. My phone was in my pocket and it kept going off. I'm like, that's really weird. Everyone I know knows that right now I'm on stage. What are you doing? And then I sat down and I got it out, and it was people that were in the audience who had gotten on our district website, found my district email, even or gone to my blog and found my blog email address that were emailing me like, hey, can you come teach me? Oh, wait, I just found out about your book. I'm gonna go grab a copy. Like, just live messages happening as I'm speaking. It was just so flattering and so validating. If I had to pick a word for the entire weekend, it was the most validating experience of my career just to know that it was not just a crazy idea in my head, it was a tangible thing that that that that educators somewhere within our profession wanted or were open to or receptive of. It was just such a validating experience. And then I gotta give a quick shout-out. Like sharing the stage with two awesome and amazing students couldn't have, yeah, like the perfect, the perfect experience for me.

SPEAKER_00 43:00

That is so awesome. And you're right, those they were energetic, they were they were they were great. I I there's never a dull moment at an AVIT conference.

SPEAKER_03 43:11

Never.

SPEAKER_00 43:12

Never a dull moment. And it's so rewarding and worthwhile. And and any if there are any district leaders that are listening, state leaders, school leaders, that you're you're wondering, what is Avid? What what is this this concept? It's more than a concept, it is actually a way to experience education, it's a way of learning, and it touches the lives of so many and helps to develop young people. So if you are interested in finding out more about AVIT, do your research. If you're in a district in which there are certain schools that have it and your school doesn't, do your research. You know, there's so much out there on the internet. You can go to avid.org and find out more and uh just reach out to any individual that you can find in your district or supporting district that may be fans of it because it is so much to unpack in just a in a small amount of time. But I will have another show later in which I go into more about avid. Some of the platforms that I love speaking on are visible learning. And so now that the my district is making sure that it is also present in CTE and I will be helping and being a part of those discussions, then there'll be another upcoming episode in which I talk more about AVID strategies and so forth. So the beginnings of AVID and everything. So that's something to look out for. But I'm so glad that you had that phone. Even though that phone might have been a little distracting and did not take away, we would not have known at all that your phone was going off. But it's all it's always good when you're when you are presenting and you're speaking and and you see where people are saying, you're doing a great job, or you know, I want to get your book. So it is always um a good moment to have that happening. So so glad you had an opportunity to experience that because it does speak and attest to who you are, Dustin. It does. Thank you. So we are coming close to the end. So, and I will say to the audience, Dustin has agreed to come back on for part two because I, as I already knew, we're gonna have so much to talk about. So there are so many more things that I want to be able to dive in with you. So, listeners, you will have an opportunity to hear him again in a later show because there is so much we want to unpack and still talk about. And by that time, you will have started your new school year. So we so I know there'll be some questions I'll ask you about the studios and how they're doing and how they're embracing the concepts. But just a couple more things that I do want to ask you before uh we get we get close to the end. What do you wish the academic teachers understood about teaching and learning in physical education?

SPEAKER_02 46:14

Man, I love that you asked this question because I think this is and it's the the professional development professional development presentations I do on literacy in all spaces at its core. There's one fundamental concept that I think administrators, teachers, all educators have to understand better, which is the concept of teaching versus supporting. And I've and this one this one's for the admin, the administrators listening, because I remember so often that there's it was presented to me all teachers are literacy teachers, and man, on a banner or on a title of a PD, that sounds amazing, and it's very inspiring, and and at its core, it's true. But where I think the verbiage betrays the objective is that as a physical education teacher, my my learning process that I want, or the learning process I want students to engage in isn't about teaching it to them, it's about supporting what they're learning in the other classrooms. I remember in one of the early years of my career, I had the chance to observe a social studies teacher as I was walking down the hallway. I noticed she was had a whiteboard with a bunch of writing on it that was teaching them about sentence structure and essay structure and things of that nature. And I sat back and she was one of my mentors, so I got to sit, she went and sat in the classroom, no distractions, you know. She carried on, and the the mini lesson went on for about 10 to 15 minutes about just teaching this to them. And I said, This is a great idea on paper, but that's 10 to 15 minutes you've taken away from your content area. Our objective as non-literacy or non-core as a non-core subject, I want to support what they're doing in those classes. And so for me, that means talking to you know a teacher in another content area and saying, what are you working with them on? And then giving students opportunities to practice those skills in my classroom where executing it might make a little bit more sense to them. You can ask someone to write a reflection about the themes of the outsiders in an ELA classroom, and it might hit, it might not. But if you ask them to reflect on a theme like man-to-man defense and basketball, it makes more sense to them. And so I just would hope for core area teachers or traditional classroom teachers, even who wanted to be a little bit more broad, to just remember it's not our jobs to teach all the other content in our classrooms, it's our jobs to support it, and supporting it and teaching it look very different. I'm amazed at how many times that simple conversation with another PE teacher changes their perspective. And they go, Oh, that makes more sense. Like, yeah, there's plenty of ways that I can support those things. It's not, it's not about like just using that that that right vocabulary and understanding that our job as a as a non-traditional classroom, or as an elective teacher, or just for me specifically as a PE teacher, I'm not trying to teach them. I'm trying to support what they're learning in their other classes. And I think when you get that across all the content areas, man, your school community becomes a force for helping students learn. This year I'm looking forward to have social studies teachers that I'm collaborating with who are like, how can we bring our subjects together and kind of working with one another? I think even they started to realize the vision is a little bit different when you understand the objective a little bit more clearly and fairly.

SPEAKER_00 50:47

So our our next the next part is this is a lightning round. I have about three questions that are real, real quick ones with real quick answers, okay?

SPEAKER_02 50:58

I'll do my best. I'm a very long-winded individual.

SPEAKER_00 51:01

Well, lightning rounds added in the last interview that I did, and it was great. So I've started to implement these in the next interviews. So for those of you that are listening, if you're going to be interviewed by me, just know there'll be a lightning round. Okay, so question your favorite wicker component.

SPEAKER_02 51:24

Writing.

SPEAKER_00 51:26

Okay. Writing. All right. What is one word that describes your classroom? One word.

SPEAKER_02 51:40

You know what? No, I'm gonna be fair. Rigor.

SPEAKER_00 51:43

Rigor.

SPEAKER_02 51:43

Rigorous.

SPEAKER_00 51:44

Rigorous All right, there we go. Finish this sentence.

SPEAKER_02 51:50

Students learn best when they're celebrated for what they are.

SPEAKER_00 52:06

They're celebrated for what they are. Love that. And then the last one. One avid strategy every PE teacher should try. Inquiry.

SPEAKER_01 52:27

Inquiry.

SPEAKER_00 52:28

I agree with that one. Totally agree with that one. All right. Well, Dustin, I'd like to leave the educators with something they can actually take back to their classrooms. And uh this is the closing question. If an educator listening today, whether they teach PE, CTE, English, math, science, social studies, related arts, electives, if they want to make learning more visible and give students greater ownership tomorrow morning, what's one thing you would challenge them to do?

SPEAKER_02 53:03

Man, this is a big challenge, but I think I think educators listening will understand this. Problem-based learning. Problem-based learning. I think just like giving them real-world authentic learning tasks. I can't speak enough for how valuable it is, regardless of the content area, every time. Every single time.

SPEAKER_00 53:37

Like-minded, I agree with that heartily. Our students need to have more practice with figuring things out and not just making everything doesn't require a spontaneous decision. Sometimes you have to work, work it out in your mind, work it out how you're going to resolve this issue.

SPEAKER_02 54:13

It really kind of makes those connections solidify and goes, now I understand it.

SPEAKER_00 54:18

Yes, it does. Well, thank you. Thank you so much for being on the show today. What I hope educators have taken away from today is that great instruction doesn't belong just to any one particular subject area. Inquiry doesn't just belong to science. Collaboration doesn't just belong to project-based classrooms, and rigor certainly doesn't belong only to traditional academic courses. When students can think, question, collaborate, reflect, communicate, and understand what they're learning and why they're learning it, we're creating the conditions for meaningful learning, whether they're standing in a traditional classroom, a CTE lab, or a gym. And maybe that's the biggest lesson from today's conversation. Don't ask an avid work in my classroom, but ask how can I make strategies authentic to the way my students learn? I want to thank you again for listening to The Road to an Effective Classroom Environment. And thank you again, Dustin, for being here with us today and sharing your story. And I would love to see you and welcome you back for a part two once your school year has gone, come in, and you've gotten the new kiddos and just knowing just how you are adjusting to them and how they're adjusting to you.

SPEAKER_03 55:42

I would absolutely love to be back.

SPEAKER_00 55:44

And until next time, keep building classrooms where students don't just participate, they understand, engage, and own their learning. Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 55:54

Absolutely. Thank you.