I'm recording from my living room in beautiful Marietta, Georgia, you're listening to the thinking cluesive Podcast, episode seven. I'm your host, Tim Vegas. Today I will be speaking with Dan Habib about his new film Who Cares About Kelsey. The film will be broadcast on public television beginning of the weekend of September 28 2013. In addition to the film, there are 11 Mini films available to watch on the website. Who cares about kelsey.com that support the message of inclusion, and positive behavior support? Dan and I talk about Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports the importance of leadership and systems change, and the all important question who we think is going to win the World Series. So without further ado, let's get to the podcast. Thanks for listening. Joining us today on the thinking cluesive podcast is Dan Habib. Dan is a former photo journalist turned filmmaker whose award winning documentary about his son, including Samuel captured the hearts of the disability rights community, including my own. His most recent film Who Cares About Kelsey follows high schooler Kelsey Carroll in her senior year as she attempts to graduate, at the same time coming to grips with their history of abuse, neglect, feeling grades and ADHD. The film challenges us to reframe our concept of the problem student and gives us an approach that is much more empowering and proactive. Dan, thank you for taking some time out of your day to speak with me.
Oh, it's a pleasure, Tim. Thanks for having me.
Great. I know that for many of the people who listen to this podcast, you really Dan Habib does not need an introduction, but a lot of us know you from your work and including Samuel. And that just chronicling what full inclusion looks like for your son? What kind of connections do you think can be made from your first documentary, including Samuel? To what your most recent? Who Cares About Kelsey? Do you see that there are similar themes about inclusion, about never giving up on a student? And were those intentional at all?
Yeah, thanks for the question. I think there were a lot of connections and really doing including Samuel and traveling around the country with it led to this film, and I never would have done this song if I hadn't had the experience. The as you probably know, including Samuel is books as largely I'm my son, Samuel, as you mentioned. And Samuel has pretty amazing kid, of course, I'm biased, but he's a huge sports fan. We live in New England. So he's big into the Red Sox, the Patriots and NASCAR. He loves science. He loves social studies. He's in eighth grade. Now. He's doing really well. He's been on the honor roll. He's also kitted out several Palsy and use the communication device for most of his communication as a feeding tube, you know, describe him in different ways, use a wheelchair for mobility. And I was fortunate in that, that when I did this on, including Samuel, I had really no idea where it was going to go. I just felt like it was a film I had to do. But it led me around the country. And I've shown it I think more than 400 times at this point in more than 40 states and multiple countries. And the thing that was interesting, almost everywhere I went, people would ask lots of questions. And one of the questions that came up again and again was do you think it might be harder to include kids with more hidden disabilities than the willie obviously the border like spaniels? And so I started thinking about that and doing some research and the first question was, what a hidden disability. So I think that's important. So just touch on because a hidden disability is a huge swath of kind of labels or categories, whatever you want to call them. It can include mental health issues of schizophrenia or bipolar, it could be post traumatic stress. It could be anxiety, depression, fuel, alcohol syndrome, you know, you name it. It can be caused by genetics, it can be caused by environmental factors like poverty or abuse, it can be caused by neurological issues. And so what I found in talking with people is that a lot of educators were actually having a more difficult time, including and supporting kids with the hidden disabilities. And in fact, the outcomes for kids with disabilities is awful and you have about a over 50% dropout rate. We've got about 55% of these kids are not included in general education classrooms. So that means the vast majority are not included. They are twice as likely as a kid with any other kind of disability to be incarcerated addicted to drugs and teen parents are living on the street after graduating. So all those all those factors In conversations and statistical research, led me to want to do a project that could be a catalyst for change. For kids with hidden disabilities, just like including families and for kids, primarily, I think it is a disability.
So how did you find out about Somersworth? High school is that because of the proximity of where you live,
that's part of it. The film, Cares About Kelsey has filmed it so much with high school, what happened was, I started asking around and a lot of people in the field I thought you had Paula Kluth, on your shows, she's a friend and an advisor and a bit of a Syracuse and I said, you know, what is it? What cut model should I be showing? Just to demonstrate what it takes to support and include these kids successfully, you have these disabilities, and certain words coming? Okay, coming up again. And again, Positive Behavioral Supports, Universal Design for Learning differentiated instruction, you know, we can talk more about these if you want during the podcast, but there are certain educational practices that are so widely respected and evidence based practices that help all kids learn. But unfortunately, they're not being implemented in that many schools. Right, exactly. What I found was that luckily, my own state, some of my colleagues at the Institute on Disability at UNH, well, filmmaker, had been doing work in this high school, that's a pretty low income community, they don't have a lot of resources, but they are committed to finding a way to get every kid to graduate and they had one of the highest dropout rates in the state. And then did that, you know, really, they brought in positive behavioral supports or PBIS, Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports also called as a dropout prevention mechanism. You know, they had an expert in who said, you know, did you do this and do it? Well, you will dramatically reduce the dropout rate. So that got everybody on board, because they had a lot of pressure from the States. Right. So they did that. And while at the same time, they implemented a civic program, or an approach called renew, which is, which is part of the film, which is a person centered planning approach. For kids who are at risk of dropping out, it's a way for kids to the insurmountable odds to graduating, to find a way to build a team around them advisors and supporters, to break down those tasks that seem so huge, into more manageable, attainable steps towards graduation. So for four years, they reduced the dropout rate by 75%. And they reduced their disciplinary problems by 65%. And healthy, turns out was in the middle of that transformation.
I'm hearing a lot of different kinds of buzzwords, for those who are very familiar with inclusion, you know, I'm hearing positive behavior intervention supports, I'm hearing Universal Design for Learning. You know, I'm hearing person centered planning, those are all things that, that as a believer and inclusion, you know, for all kids are really, really important. How did this particular high school get all of that support? All at once? And, you know, like you said, Kelsey was a lucky recipient of being there and environment, and then also you being involved with this film, you know, highlighting the changes, you know, that affected her and the school. And so how, I mean, how does, how does that happen? Exactly? Sure.
Well, it can happen in a lot of different ways, depending on the school. One thing I will say is, as I've talked to a lot of people around the country, money is not the biggest factor here in schools, transformation, inclusion, I mean, yes, education needs money. No, there's no doubt about it. Right? You want to be able to have a good staffing ratio, you want to be have properly trained staff, you want to have the technology, of course, and that's just about good education. What I think I found makes the biggest difference is great leadership. And Somersworth has that integrate principle, Sharon lampo, I think it's very difficult to have this type of positive transformation and progress without strong leaders. And you also need an attitude within a school that we are just we're about supporting every kid and not giving up any kid. And we're going to presume that every kid is confident, we're going to make sure we do everyone in that building knows that every kid can be successful. And then all of us understand that listen, a lot of us struggle when we were younger, whether we have a disability or not. There are truths in our life where we struggled. And you know, you got to get kids through those bumps. So specifically, in Somersworth, they did have there was a New Hampshire Department of Education grant that incentivize Positive Behavioral Supports, because that's an approach that is seen as a practice that's effective across the country. And maybe we can talk to us about what what it is in a minute, but once that was incentivized, they were able to get some training for their staff. And that was certainly helpful. I mean, the fact that there was somebody who helped facilitate the process from UNH, student disability was extremely helpful. But I'd say really, if it has the capacity has to be built internally and ultimately, that's what happened so much. They weren't relying on outside consultants. We yours. They were they took this on themselves. And they learned that really what it's about when you look at Positive Behavioral Supports, or PBIS, is looking at the school and saying, Listen, 80% of the students here are going to be successful if we have a really positive healthy school climate and culture, and good instruction, right about 80%. Agree. Now, that's easier said than done. So a lot of the focus of their implementation of PBIS was about working on that school culture and making it a place that kids safe, the staff safe, they felt a strong sense of community, there was a feeling with respect to consistency around discipline and language around discipline, you know, all those important things. And there are there are maybe 10 or 15% of kids who need something more, you know, they need extra instructional support. So they might need to check in with someone in the morning and check in with someone, at the end of the day, he was checking checkout. That's what you know, if language is called kind of that, that yellow tear of support, kids who might need something extra, and then they're the calcium of the world, have everything going against them. And they're going to need intensive supports where they will either drop out or school in many cases are going to farm them out to you know, a quote unquote, special school that could do behavior problems, which is often you know, sinkhole is just around lots of kids with really challenging behavior. And that's just not a really good roadmap. So, you know, Kelsey was a kid that has severe ADHD, she also deals with depression and anxiety. She was very public about the fact in the film that she was sexually abused as a kid. She was self mutilating, you know, eighth grade, ninth grade, her mother was very heavy into drugs for that kind of emotionally disconnected, all of her siblings, pretty much. You know, many of them had teen pregnancies, or the negative school. So she had, there's a lot on her life that was putting on Corona direction was dropping out, probably in frustration, probably drunk driving. And the film is really about how the school worked with her to change her trajectory, to the point now where she's taking college classes, trained to be a firefighter and traveling around the country with me on this film for hopefully, opening people's minds.
Yeah, it's great to see the transformation that Kelsey Kelsey goes through, you know, at the end of the film, you know, I don't want to give away too much, you know, but
okay, that it will people hoping to catch on public television.
That's right. And that Well, since you brought that up, September 28, it's going to be on public television, but not not everywhere. It's only going to be certain cities. Is that correct? Yeah.
The best way to know if it's going to be in your listeners area to go to our website, who cares about kelsey.com. There's a big red public broadcast label right on the front and just click on that. And it lists where all the broadcasts are happening, and when all around the country on public television. And then Chelsea and I are also doing a lot of community events this year. So we have a whole upcoming screencast as well. So we're traveling and it's also going to be on public television this fall. Excellent.
Are you? I mean, since I'm based here in Georgia, I didn't see any Georgia dates. Have you been to Georgia? Are you planning on coming to Georgia at all?
Oh, yeah, I was in Georgia for the other behavioral support the conference about a year ago. So the next time I'd be there, I might be there. Sam wants to go see the race the NASCAR races in talladega. So it may just be a pleasure trip thing in Atlanta. But um, so what happens is we tend to get in patients from all around the country and get those we try and go to the places but Yes, unfortunately, won't be able to in your backyard anytime.
Well, no pressure or anything
like this in person.
Let's talk about this idea of, of good kids and bad kids. Because I think that that's what many students who are in the same situation as Kelsey kind of get labeled, as you know, well, they're just, they're just a bad kid. And unfortunately, it's something I've heard before it's something other educators and other parents have heard before, that these are just bad kids. And if I was, you know, if they were my kid, you know, I would, you know, you know, and give a list of reasons why they wouldn't be acting that way. Is there such thing as a bad kid? Or a good kid? And do we ever get into the situation of Well, we, you know, we just can't save everybody. Sure.
First of all, I will name this film, no bad kids. So that's meaning there are no bad kids. So that kind of gives away my hand. I don't think there are bad kids. I mean, I think there are kids who have had behavior, challenging behavior, problematic behavior, and you just Adri given, but I think that behavior happens for a reason and I think behavior is often a form of communication, when kids are acting out or beat, whether they're a year old or two years old, or 18, there's a reason for that. So a lot of kids, let's say, in middle school or high school, they may find that by acting out, they're getting something that they need, it might be attention, because they're not getting enough attention, either at school or at home, they might get tossed out of the classroom where they're not feeling successful, because they're struggling in school. And so it's a lot better just to get tossed out of the classroom. They might if they're lucky, maybe to get suspended. And then I talked to kids I did interviewed as part of this project for some many films that we can talk about, but I did end up incarcerated youth, and they talked about how in their teenagers didn't love getting, they would be on their own, and hook up with some friends, they drink and smoke effects, you know, it was a great day. And it just shows you the failure of the punitive approaches, because what you find is that when you figure out what is at the root of the kids behavior, you know, some kids really do need to be taught because, you know, and those are kids are not necessarily sociopaths, or anything, but kids who just for whatever reason, they just don't necessarily know it's certain appropriate behavior. Behavior needs to be taught just like English and math and social studies. You're
the film Who Cares About Kelsey, and then also the mini films, which are fabulous, by the way. They mostly talk about older kids, and I know that you have the one mini film about, I'm not gonna say her name, right. Is it? Tasha? Tasha? Yeah, that's great. Yes. Is a little, little autistic girl who has the support that she has in her elementary school. Can you talk a little bit about what elementary and middle schools can do? As in regards to PBIS? And how to support you know, kids that have some challenging behavior?
Yeah, of course, you know, actually, or nationally, more elementary and middle schools practice of behavioral supports PBIS. than high school. So in the case of Kelson centers with high that's more the exception than the rule, even at the preschool level, more permitted this whole program Wide Positive Support. And there's a stat that is really stunning. That is imagine what do you think is is the grade level at which more kids are expelled than any other level?
I wouldn't know. Preschool, really,
preschool more kids are spoken preschool than any other levels School, which is stunning. But partly and partly because, you know, they can because most principles are private, but partly because behavior is so misunderstood at every age, and that age. So I think at the origins and middle school level, many of the practices that I tried to show in the film in the many films you mentioned, which people really can watch on our website for free. If you go to our cares about kelsey.com. There's a whole multimedia section that you probably found that has all the film, The Kelty story was was dramatic, and it covered a lot of ground, but I wanted to cover more ground. And I wanted to show things like a kid like Marcel. Ashley, Marcel, this is a film that's just on the education kit that we sell. But I'll just say briefly, it's that one looks largely at racial disparities in discipline is a tremendous racial disparity as well, African American boys are disciplined and punished at a much higher rate than white kids. So you see that in his story, you also see a kid who escalates very quickly and intensely to violence and how the school handles that are really amazing way by saying, you know, what is it? What are the rules of behavior, and there's something called a functional behavioral assessment that's done, particularly when kids were younger that we've done anytime we have a kid with real challenging behavior, like a micelle, or Tasha. And you say, well, let's track when this behavior occurs, let's let's really track it for a couple of weeks and do some research and say, let's look for everything that happens before the behavior occurs and really look and see if there's something that's triggering that challenging behavior. And is there a way to eliminate that trigger, particularly Kasia is a little Boston that you mentioned, where they she goes to a school that has positive support of an incredible staff. They use augmentative communication devices for kids like Kasia, she has access to one. But basically, they found that one of her triggers was the word know that they realized that for tracking this rally, every time someone says no, she would have a seizure. Now, you might say, Well, you got to say no, right. But there are other ways to say no, they're saying that, this way to redirect the killer and say, this isn't the best time for that right. Now. How about we do that? No, you didn't say no. And that, and she actually responded very well to that. So the other thing that I tried to look at was, Are there critical times in kids lives, where things go awry. And what I found in interviewing the six incarcerated youth that I've made short films about is that often it was middle school. And often it was because they weren't necessarily the troublemakers. But they were kids like Tareekh, who is going to drop out of school drunk every day in seventh grade, and nobody noticed that he'd be in the back of the room sleeping. He wasn't making trouble. But the only time you get in trouble was when he was drunk, and he got caught by the cops. And then they wouldn't get arrested, he got arrested 10 times in middle school. So here's a kid that obviously needed some help, obviously need some more proactive intervention, and he wasn't getting it all he was getting punished. So to me, those were incredibly insightful, these interviews, and these are just incredibly powerful, and eloquent people who talk about what happened in life. Another one is Nicole gray interviewed and when she was 14, she got involved in very emotionally abusive relationship with a boy. And I will kind of tell so much about the story, very powerful story. And I'm like, it's gonna unfold as people watch it. But she ended up doing something really, really horrible, because this boy manipulated her. And then one more, I'll just mentioned the story of Axel. So you're truly a story on a kid who was underestimated for many years because of autism. And then he when he went to this new school, coincidentally, also in Somersworth, they worked so hard to give him the communication tools he needed. And for many kids who don't have good access to communication tools, like a device or some type of system, the only way they can show what they want is by acting out or yelling or having some behaviors. It's a desperate attempt to say pay attention to me, I'm trying to tell you something. So I'm in my own zone, sandal has in addition to iconic us, we were in working extremely hard to get to that. I did a film on restraint seclusion, which we could also watch on the site that was funded through a big breath of cash. And the stories are so painful, because kids who didn't have access to communication, were really abused for years. Because a they couldn't express what they really needed or wanted. And be they couldn't really tell anybody, they were being restrained, included, and there would be somebody at school. So it's an awful story, but an important one. So
yeah, I mean, everything you're bringing up is so important, especially for educators to understand that there are so many things behind the way that a student behaves. You know, and, and also something that we kind of assume, when we talk about functional behavior assessments, or, you know, analyzing behavior, is that behavior is this negative thing, when it's really, it's really not only negative, or only positive, it's really a mixture of things, you know, and just like URI, and what we do, and what we're motivated by, it's, it's never all, you know, one positive good thing, or not all one positive, negative thing, it's everything overlaps, you know, meanings overlap. So it's a, it's a much more complicated issue, and especially when you have students who are nonverbal, right, if you don't have a font, if they don't have a functional communication system, then you're going to see a lot of things that are going to be interpreted as negative. And also, I'm not sure if this ever comes up in, in the film or any of the many films, but health is also a huge reason for someone to, you know, quote, unquote, act out, you know, if you have, if you have an ear infection, if you have, you know, pain in your body, if you have headaches, if and if you don't have a functional communication system, all that stuff is going to affect how you behave and and then you get labeled as a bad kid. So
exactly, you know, you're really hitting some really important points and reminds me to two comments that I heard that really inspired me to do this project. One was I was up in Buffalo show and concluding Tango Buffalo, New York. And a mom was saying she had a child with some emotional behavioral disabilities and that child, if he didn't even have its shoes tied just a certain way in the morning, if you didn't have just the right hands on just the right foods, and just the right texture and just the right order, you know, I mean, he would blow up, he would just have a real meltdown. It's a she would work so hard every day to keep everything you know, in order for him and meet his need. And it would take so long but should we get him out the door. And then some days he might still be out with her. I had some challenging behavior, and she would get judged for being a bad mom. Not just it's about the kids being judged and off about the parents often being judged for their kids behavior when and this mom was just crying and saying you don't even know they don't even know what I'd do just to get my kid out the door every day. And in a similar vein, I was speaking to a kid at a screening, and he was telling me that that just to get through every day of school people have no idea where it takes you know how much concentration how much patience how hard it is for him to do this. because he could just a simulation of school and those things kids are saying, and, you know, frankly, every time I go into my son families Middle School, I'm just hoping, Wow, this place is completely overwhelming. I do it every day, and I will teach you how to do it. It's just so intense. And you know, and yet we expect our kids to not have, you know, to not ever get wealthy or angry or, or impulsive or respond, when, you know, we as adults do that stuff all the time. And I think sometimes we keep the gear in the back of the gear ourselves or our partner.
Yeah, yeah. A couple more things, before we wrap up our conversation. The first thing is, I'd like for you to talk about, you know, what positive behavior intervention supports really is, and, you know, maybe give an example of what it's not, because when usually, when I talk to people, you know, about applied behavior analysis, positive behavior support, they have a preconceived idea of what that is. And it's a very clinical, usually, it's a very clinical idea, you know, you know, subjecting our students as lab rats and being very right, you know, poking and prodding, see what kind of behaviors come out and you know, stuff like that? Can you kind of speak to that a little bit? Sure,
I'd be happy to do it. Let me just say, I'm a filmmaker. So often, I like to communicate this film. And I want to just point you to one more minute film on our website called education revolution at summers with high school. And that's a 13 minute film that shows how the school transformed through probably handle support. And it really puts a picture on how available support looks like and feels like going to school. So in addition to what I'm about to tell you, I hope you will check that out on the website. But basically, what first officer I would what PBIS is. And first of all, the positive behavioral support is kind of the whole principle of this approach that we're going to that we've been talking about how the Behavioral Interventions and Support is a kind of a very specific framework that is developed in over decades at federal level, and is now supported by a National Technical Assistance Center, which is basically under the federal government. And people can look at it at PBIS pbis.org, I really recommend people go to that site. It's incredible. All the Guru's who really been working on this for decades are part of that organization. But PBIS is not a packaged curriculum, or some of you download or buy or a specific intervention. It's really a framework, or decision making framework that guides a school in selecting and integrating and implementing best practices. So when we talk about Universal Design for Learning, or differentiated instruction, or miscommunication, all these things fall under this can fall into this PBIS umbrella. And it's a framework for organizing. And I actually got to know it on a couple of in a couple different ways. Because not only that, I studied it through this film, I've actually been part of the middle school team where my son Daniel goes in implementing its last two years of their school. So what I would say, it's important to know is that it's almost the polar opposite of the zero tolerance restricts your out policies that are very reactive to behavior, okay. So when you see such a behavior, reactive punish you discipline, put kids in detention for them at school. But unfortunately, those approaches have absolutely no evidence of working, they don't change behavior, you don't get a source of behavior, you know, teach behavior and actually don't create safer schools. There's no evidence suggests that with PBIS has a tremendous amount of literature behind it that suggests that when you when you basically think about positive approaches to dealing with behavior issues, so you incentivize good behavior as much as possible, rather than just punishing bad behavior doesn't mean that you let kids off the hook, but still consequences and those consequences are unified, consistently, applied over over the whole school. So it's positive, it's behavioral. So it understands that behavior is a form of communication, interventions and interventions mean you're delivering interventions for kids, for whatever they need. So for a typical kid, they might just need a good strong, healthy school environment. That's the intervention and good instruction, of course, and that's healthy, they need Renu it in person centered planning or wraparound more intensive, and then it supports. So what does a kid like Kelsey need to be successful? What kind of supports what she needs? And I tell you, I worry particularly around the common core, which I think is a really good idea. We need common core standards. I worry that we're raising the bar, which is good. You know, we're making sure that kids really develop these competencies, but I do worry that kids that you didn't work with are going to fall through the cracks. Because you may if you're not delivering the kind of support they need to learn the Common Core, where they're going to get the lesson ethics stuff. So you know, I just seen few guys work as an organizing framework at a school level. You have the kind of discussions you'd have any type of strategy and strategic approaches you need in order to run a very complicated But which is the school?
That's a good point about the about the Common Core. And, you know, it's something that that a lot of educators are just having a hard time putting, you know, wrapping their mind around. Right? You know what exactly that is. And I think, what I'd like to know, I'd like to know what you think about how PBS can be implemented, you know, nationwide, because there are, you know, you've talked about this before, not on this podcast, but in lots of other places, how inclusion PVS really is only practiced in pockets around the country. So certain states will be doing well in a certain area, but really only certain counties in that state. And then other states will be doing something else a little bit different or better, you know, and then, so how do we get PBIS? And universal design, you know, and differentiated instruction? How do we get those things, those major ideas into more schools?
Right? That's a great question. Well, there's several thoughts that come to mind. One is that I think we need to educate leaders at the state and federal level, and many of the federal level really already get this because I've had a chance to talk to a lot of them at the state level, you know, really demonstrate the evidence that these approaches improve student achievement, because I think that so much of this comes down to student achievement, and at the church, you wanted to be successful. But you know, so I think on one hand, you want to make sure they know that this will actually help kids learn it will improve their academic achievement will improve their chances of veterans in school and going to college. And there's evidence to suggest that it also will address it oftentimes to address a lot of disparities, whether it's economics or racial disparities, in terms of which kids are being served well, and which can be mopping serve. Well, I think that's important for them to know as well. But I also think that there is this, you know, I asked that question a lot when I go to public speaking, which I do a lot in around the country. And I asked the audience, when you think of who you are today as a person, and I don't mean like your job momentarily, although that's a piece of it. But you know, your relationships, your hobbies, your passions, everything, the whole picture. And then you look back to your education, especially taking 12 What had a bigger influence on forming who you are today, what was the academic experience at school? Or wasn't the social and emotional experience of school? And you want to get what the ratio to the with?
I'm sure, it's more social, emotional. It's
like 98%. Yeah. And what's what's interesting about that is, if you, if you think it is suggesting questions, say, Well, how much of our time do we spend in schools, focused on academics, social, emotional, it's going to probably be 90% academic. So I think part of this is also looking more holistically at our kids and who we want them to become as adults, and realizing that focusing on behavior is really good for that effect. It's a very healthy way to spend time, you know, supporting our kids and helping them be successful, they need to learn social and emotional skills in order to navigate a lot of challenges in life, academic and otherwise. So that's one thing. I think that just general awareness, there is there are some really exciting scale up some of these practices happening right now. And I'm actually fortunate to be involved in one of them. There was a major grant awarded called slip and other familiar with this at all, yes. Okay. So there was a request for proposal that from the federal government into the $25 million grant, to create a National Technical Assistance Center based different piece of education. But it's even bigger than that. I mean, it's really about all these things. We're talking about, how do we, how do we scale that up nationally, so University of Kansas got the grant of the Institute on Disability at UNH, where I work is one of the subcontractors, and I'm part of the five year grant to do film around the country at six knowledge development sites to call him and and they're really schools that are shown, they're among the most amazing, inclusive public schools in the country. So by by studying them by showing them on film, by educating them by having these states that are called implementation states, they're trying to basically scale up these practices. With a wide level. It's very, very exciting. And I think if both people are extremely jazzed about it, and they see it as the best hope we have right now to show that these approaches that we've been talking about the last week or so can be scaled up to a state and national level. So I'm hoping I have mutual for it. Yeah,
I'm very hopeful to I'm hoping that at the end of you know, the, I'm not sure is it a three year five year grant, I think, I believe five years. Okay, so at the end of that five years, we'll have some really concrete data, not only data But also, you know, examples like with what you're doing with filming, yeah, that we patient. Exactly,
that it really already had a lot of implementation as well. Yeah.
So so we can use that as a really a catalyst to change, you know, the what, you know what kids need and how all learners can benefit from that. Right,
exactly. I mean, listen, this is a democracy. And we can't tell everybody, we shouldn't play what we do in every single community, you know, we not a dictatorship, what we have to do is show what the research and the evidence says is working, you know, and really educate people and give. And I also do think that the power of film can show some people are completely convinced by the data. But I think most people want to, they want to see what it looks like. And that's why I feel so fortunate to do the work I do for film. And I wanted to mention one other thing that we're doing right now, which is related to this, is I think that, you know, we named the film Who Cares About Kelsey, because, on one hand, you could say, well, who the hell cares about Kelsey, you know, she comes from a rock family, she's probably gonna drop out, you know, she's not really worth the effort. But really, as you go through the film, you see, just Who Cares About Kelsey and the her mentor, Kevin Plank are usually the principal, and few members of her family and their own complicated way of caring about her. And ultimately, she cares about herself. And that's what really makes the difference. So what we decided to do with this national launch is that we're also launching a campaign called eye care by, like, what do you what are you doing in your everyday life to show that you care about kids are struggling. And we offer very simple suggestions for people to take on a daily basis, whether you're an educator or a family member, or youth to make a difference in the lives of kids, and we're giving them very concrete steps they can take. So we actually have been watching that end of September, so I'm not sure when this will be on the hair, but it may hope it'll be last for the time that the broadcast that I care about that or, and again, it uses film as as a way to teach some of these lessons.
Well, excellent, excellent. Thank you for the conversation. And I have one more quick question for you. Very important. Are the Red Sox gonna win the World Series?
I sure hope so. We just watched me tonight and they actually aired we'll be watching them to the emergency Championship Series winning and they got to work through. We are big, big fans in this family. And I say I remember the years ago when they played the Yankees and they came back for three games now. I just last week, I was so tired, but I loved every minute of it. How about you? Are you rooting
for him? Well, no, I'm a I'm a Los Angeles Dodger fan. So I exactly I still have the 19 the 1998 World Series Kirk Gibson homerun and engrained in my brain. So that
what we're gonna be reading. Right now we're looking for a pirate's Red Sox World Series. No offense, but we just think, Well, I think that'd be fun. Well,
that would be pretty interesting. Yeah, I definitely have my bias. And since I am in the Atlanta area, I do have a special place in my heart for the Braves. But yeah, I used to. I grew up in Los Angeles. So that is my that's my team. All right, well, we
might be one of your teams against the rest. Okay, it's really good to talk with you. Thanks so much for having me on. Absolutely. Thank
you for your time. That concludes this edition of The think inclusive podcast. For more information about Dan to the even the film Who Cares About Kelsey, make sure to visit the website who cares about kelsey.com You can watch the many films, find statistics and articles about the issues brought up in the film. Find out when the film will be broadcast in your area. Links to purchase the film or even when your very own screening of the film. You can also follow us on Twitter at WC a Kelsey. Remember, you can always find us on Twitter at think underscore inclusive or on the web at think inclusive.us Today's show was produced by myself talking into USB headphones using a newly refurbished MacBook Pro GarageBand and escape account. Bumper music by Jose Galvez with the song press. You can find it on iTunes. You can also subscribe to the inclusive podcast via the iTunes Music Store or PodOmatic. The largest community of independent podcasters on the planet from Marietta, Georgia. Please join us again on the think inclusive podcast. Thanks for your time and attention
