The PE Literacy Playbook

Welcome to The PE Literacy Playbook!

If you’ve landed here, chances are you care about teaching, movement, or maybe a little bit of both. My name is Dustin Woods, and I’m a physical education and health teacher who has spent the better part of the last decade trying to answer one simple question:

How do we make PE more than just movement?

For me, that question led to a professional (and personal) obsession with literacy—reading, writing, reflection, and communication—and how those skills can live naturally inside a gym, weight room, or field.

Yes—movement is the primary focus of physical education. It’s where everything starts. But I’ve always believed that if movement is all we focus on, we miss the deeper learning that makes PE meaningful. PE can be a space where thinking, communication, and reflection live right alongside fitness and skill development—where movement becomes the vehicle for learning, not the end of it.

Over the years, I’ve built and experimented with ways to make literacy feel natural in PE—creating opportunities for students to pause, reflect, and put their learning into words. Whether it’s a quick written reflection, a short discussion, or a visual prompt that gets them thinking, the goal has always been the same: to help students connect movement to meaning.

That work eventually evolved into my book, Rigorous Literacy in Physical Education, which officially releases on November 1. The book dives into the how and why behind making literacy in PE both authentic and engaging—by a PE teacher, for PE teachers.

But this site isn’t just about the book.

It’s about the ongoing conversation.

Here, I’ll be sharing longer reflections, behind-the-scenes classroom stories, and practical tools for teachers who want to push their craft a little further. Some posts will be big-picture—how we think about culture, equity, and engagement. Others will be simple, usable ideas you can try tomorrow.

But this site will also take a step back to look at the bigger picture of physical education—the evolving culture of our field. We’ll talk about what it means to teach movement in a modern world, how PE can balance fun with rigor, and how we can challenge outdated stereotypes about what our classrooms should look and feel like.

I also want this to be a space for honest reflection about the profession itself—our wins, our frustrations, and the daily realities that make PE such a unique, sometimes misunderstood, but incredibly impactful place to teach.

If you’re a PE teacher, coach, admin, or anyone who believes movement is an academic pursuit in its own right—I’m glad you’re here.

Welcome to The PE Literacy Playbook.

Let’s rethink what learning can look like in motion.