Dan Habib: Hi, my name is Dan Habib, and this is the Think Inclusive Podcast.

Tim Villegas: Recording from my office in beautiful Marietta, Georgia, you are listening to the Think Inclusive Podcast, Episode 24. I’m your host, Tim Villegas.

Now, before we get into our interview with Dan Habib, which I am very excited to share with you, I want to let you know of a couple things that we are very excited about.

First, we want your input about topics for the podcast. So if you have an idea or you want some more information about a certain aspect of inclusive education—whether they’re strategies, when you’re in an IEP meeting, or if you want more information about research, or if you want ideas about professional development—let us know.

And you can use Twitter. So you can tweet us at @think_inclusive. You can also ask us via the Facebook page. You can find us in the search feature on Facebook, or you can also contact us through our contact information page at our website, thinkinclusive.us. Also, if you have ideas about guests you’d like to hear interviewed on the podcast, let us know about that as well.

The other thing we’re excited to mention is that very soon we’ll be offering what we’re calling inclusion coaching. So if you just need someone to talk to in preparation for going to an IEP meeting, or maybe there’s a specific situation where you want to advocate for your child to be included in general education for a significant portion of the day or all day, and you just don’t know how to go about that, we would love to work with you.

I will be providing more information on how that can be a reality for you very soon. We’re not quite ready to share that, but if you are interested, you also can contact us via the ways I just talked about.

So today we have filmmaker Dan Habib. And if you are not familiar with his films—Including Samuel or Who Cares About Kelsey—after the podcast, please go check them out. They are fantastic and also great ways to introduce the topic of inclusive education and just thinking inclusively about schools and about our communities.

We talk about his new film, Intelligent Lives, which is a documentary that highlights the lives of people with intellectual disabilities. And when you see this film, you will rethink the very nature of how we measure intelligence.

After the podcast, please visit patreon.com/thinkinclusivepodcast, where you can support our goal to bring you in-depth interviews with inclusive education and community advocacy thought leaders.

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So without further ado, here is the interview.

Tim Villegas: Hello everyone. I would like to introduce Dan Habib to the Think Inclusive Podcast. Dan has been on the podcast before, a few years ago, talking about some of his other films. He’s the creator of the award-winning documentary Including Samuel, also Who Cares About Kelsey, Mr. Connolly Has ALS, and most recently, Intelligent Lives, which is why I wanted to have him on the podcast.

Dan Habib’s films have been featured in dozens of film festivals, broadcast internationally, nominated for Emmy awards, and translated into 17 languages for worldwide distribution. Dan is a filmmaker at the University of New Hampshire’s Institute on Disability. Thank you for being on the podcast.

Dan Habib: It’s great to be back with you, Tim. Thanks for having me.

Tim Villegas: So just to start us off, what’s new in your life—besides the Red Sox being just unbelievable? Every time you’re on the podcast, it looks like they’re going to win the World Series. So I’m getting a little—

Dan Habib: I think we should do this every year then and make sure they win the Series. Yeah, we actually went to spring training this year—Samuel, my wife, and I—and it was really fun. He got to meet some of the best players—Chris Sale, Xander Bogaerts—and they were so incredibly friendly. So yeah, we’re really into it this year.

And Samuel, believe it or not, is in a transition point in his life. He’s graduated high school and he’s now moving on to some other things. Just for your viewers who might be interested in Including Samuel and knowing about that, he started taking college classes this year. He’s taking a community college class, he’s doing the Partners in Policymaking, which is a national series on disability rights and leadership. He’s got a little TV show that he’s working on around disability rights for our local community access station, and he’s still taking a couple of electives at the high school and getting support from the high school. So he’s got a good transition plan.

If you have him frozen in time as a little 4-, 5-, 6-year-old in Including Samuel, that’s not him anymore. He’s shaving, he’s interested in girls, he’s got a lot of things going on.

Tim Villegas: That is absolutely amazing. I’m so happy to hear that. Wonderful, wonderful.

Well, why don’t we start really where the idea of Intelligent Lives began? I know that you’ve worked on documentaries throughout your career, but where did this idea start?

Dan Habib: Years ago, I was winding up my film Who Cares About Kelsey, my last feature-length film, and started having conversations with people about what could be the next big project. I had this idea planted by a number of people who said one of the big challenges—if not the biggest challenge—for people with disabilities is the perception of intelligence.

If you have a disability—whether it’s a physical disability, an emotional disability, visual or hearing, or certainly an intellectual disability—you’re just viewed as being less intelligent, less capable, less able to be included in school, less able to be included in competitive, integrated employment, less able to be in a relationship. It’s just a huge impediment. And I think it’s largely because our society has this very narrow view of what it means to be intelligent.

If you ask ten people on the street, “How do you measure intelligence?” I bet nine of them would probably say, “Well, an IQ test,” or something like that. So the challenge I took on at that point, about five years ago, was: how do you blow up the whole notion that there’s any one way to measure intelligence—or even any way to measure intelligence—or at least measure a person’s ability to contribute meaningfully to society?

And so that was the challenge. Then you think about, well, how do you actually do that in a film? I started doing research and found that students with intellectual disability are certainly the most segregated group of students. Only 17% of students with intellectual disability are included in regular education. And as you know, the inclusion standard is at least 80% of your day in regular education settings.

Only 40% will graduate with a regular high school diploma by the age of 21. And then, when they get out of school, not surprisingly, the unemployment rates are tremendously high. There’s only about a 15% employment rate for people with intellectual disabilities. So all these things really were bothering me—the horrible outcomes—that I decided to take on this project.

I ended up finding three young adults who are real paradigm shifters that I focused on. And certainly, we can talk more about them if you’d like.

Tim Villegas: Yeah. Where did you find these individuals? Did you go within your own network to try to find these people, or did they come and reach out to you?

Dan Habib: It was a combination. I’d known—so the three people, and actually in some ways four families—I would say are featured in the film.

First of all, one of my early decisions, which I’m very happy I was able to make, was to also look in part at the historical perspective on this. The fact that we are a country that has systematically segregated, institutionalized—and hard to say it, but true—forcibly sterilized tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of people in this country.

The whole eugenics movement of the 1920s, ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s led to the forcible sterilization of 60,000 people, the mass institutionalization of hundreds of thousands of people—much of it based on IQ tests. So I really wanted to tell that backstory in part in this film because, you know, if you look at a movement like Black Lives Matter and you don’t understand our history of racism and slavery in this country, it doesn’t make sense. If you don’t understand the role of the oppression and suppression of women in this country, you don’t understand the Me Too movement.

So I felt that historical background was important. I was able to get the actor Chris Cooper—who’s a really well-known Academy Award-winning actor. Most of your listeners have probably seen him in movies like The Bourne Conspiracy or The Muppets or Adaptation—he won the Academy Award. He narrates the historical portion but also talks very personally about his son Jesse, who, like Samuel, had cerebral palsy and was always underestimated because he navigated the world in a different way—in a wheelchair, with a communication device. So he’s a big part of the film.

But really, the three main people who are followed are:

• Micah Fialka-Feldman, who I’ve known for a number of years—him and his family. Micah goes to Syracuse University. He has a vibrant social life of hanging out with graduate students, doctoral students. He co-teaches university classes and attends classes, got a certificate in disability studies, and has an IQ of 40—or was given an IQ of 40 when he was younger. So he’s a real paradigm shifter.
• Then I knew about the Henderson School in Boston, because I had done some filming for the SWIFT project, which was a big national project to scale up inclusive ed—you’re probably very familiar with it. And so Naieer is a young man with autism who’s also a very gifted painter. This comes out in the film quite a bit because he’s a tall Black man with communication challenges. His parents and even some of the teachers are concerned about how he’s going to be perceived out in the community with unpredictable behaviors—outside of this Henderson bubble.
• And then the last character that I was able to find through a lot of research—I really wanted to represent the employment realm. I was hoping to find someone who was transitioning from a sheltered workshop situation, which is a segregated workplace often for less than minimum wage, into paid, competitive, integrated employment. I wanted to find a woman because I already had two guys that I was filming. I like my films to be very diverse ethnically, so I was preferring to find someone who had ethnic diversity other than white.

I found a young woman named Naomi Monplaisir, whose family is originally from Haiti, and whose high school—the Birch School in Providence, Rhode Island—housed a sheltered workshop where they had students working, like assembling jewelry or tasks like that, for little or no pay. And while they weren’t studying history or science or English—it was very awful. And this was just 2013. I mean, this was not a long time ago.

This school was actually part of a major lawsuit by the U.S. Department of Justice against Rhode Island that was settled in 2014. Since then, they’ve been transitioning everyone into paid, competitive, integrated employment. So I’ve been filming her transition.

Those were the characters that I was able to film for about three to four years.

Tim Villegas: So I guess that would be another question—how long did this project take for you to do?

Dan Habib: It varies. A film generally takes me about three, three and a half years to turn around from start to finish. Usually, filming is at least two to three years, and then toward the latter part of filming, you’re starting to do rough cut editing and production. Then you get into the really fine post-production of music and color and all that.

A lot of it is fundraising. I have to raise several hundred thousand dollars a year to do these projects. I have to raise almost a million dollars for each of my films. So that’s hard. We rely a lot on foundations, individual donations, things like that.

Now, Naieer I ended up filming from his freshman year right into his senior year. Naomi, I did during a more condensed time frame of about a year. So yeah, it’s quite a labor of love. You’ve got to really make sure you pick topic areas and issues that you care deeply about to keep your attention for three to four years.

Tim Villegas: Right. Well, I loved each of these stories—with Micah, Naieer, and Naomi. Naomi connected with me because I do have people in my family who work in—not necessarily in sheltered workshops—but in jobs that don’t pay full wages. Even in our own families, sometimes we have situations where they’re not treated fairly at all.

This particular instance is in California, where it’s still very much legal, quote-unquote, for people to be paid subminimum wage if they have a disability, which is completely ridiculous.

Dan Habib: Yeah, there’s a lot of legislation going on around that right now from various groups. I’m actually going to be in Washington on September 26th of this year, taking part in a congressional briefing that’ll touch on that.

So I think part of it is eliminating the subminimum wage, but that’s not in itself the whole battle. I think the whole battle is really showing that people with all kinds of disabilities can work regular jobs. It doesn’t mean they necessarily work full-time jobs. It doesn’t necessarily mean they work without any support or without any kind of customized employment. But everyone—I really do believe virtually everyone, if not everyone—can work.

And I think it’s so important to show that. In my films, when I pick people like Naomi—Naomi has significant challenges—I don’t want to pick people that make it look easy. Because I think then you can just write them off and say, “Oh sure, well they can be included or they can work, but certainly not so-and-so, the person that I know.” I want to show people that if they can do it, almost anybody can.

Tim Villegas: Right. I think that might be the perception too. Even seeing this film and seeing how the inclusion process in each of these stories—I think trying to find the parallel between, “Well, okay, how does this relate to my story? How does this relate to the people that I know?” The people in my life would never be able to do what Naomi did or Micah did or anything like that.

One of the other things—and I think that we’ve talked about this or you alluded to it—is that inclusion doesn’t necessarily mean in one place 100% of the time with no support. There’s obviously support that’s involved, and it’s planned support.

Dan Habib: Yeah, exactly. Micah’s family, who I love—Janice and Rich, his parents—are longtime activists. They actually wrote a really beautiful book that is out now. We’ve helped get it out there for Janice and their family about their story. They talk about interdependence rather than independence. I think that’s a great way to frame things.

Because interdependence is really how we all live, right? None of us—I mean, when I make a film, I rely on music composers, colorists, editors, audio engineers. I don’t do this myself. There are so many people that are part of a team.

When you watch Intelligent Lives, you see Naieer in his school. You see really progressive approaches to high school—teachers co-teaching or doing Universal Design for Learning or differentiating instruction for different learners, positive behavioral supports. I think you see, in just a fairly small amount of footage in the film where Naieer is in high school, all these evidence-based practices—what they really look like in real life.

And then, same thing in Micah’s school. You see representation of this national network of schools we now have as part of the Think College network, where universities and colleges are creating pathways all over the country—hundreds of programs—for students with intellectual disability to go to college.

And then in Naomi’s situation, she does these job trials first to see what’s the right fit. It turns out that she’s a very tactile person and a very socially outgoing person, and she thrives in the beauty salon where she has an opportunity in the film. So I think so much of it is really finding the right fit—especially around employment—finding the right fit for somebody.

I certainly wouldn’t do well if I went into a computer science lab and someone asked me to write a program like my dad used to do. That’s not my skill set. We all have strengths and challenges.

Tim Villegas: I find that the parallel is so strong between, for instance, in the story of Naomi—having a way to connect her interests with her network. So what is available within her own local community and network and match that with her interests. I thought that was a really powerful example of how you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. You just have to be very creative in what is available and the people she already knows.

Dan Habib: Like the social capital meeting I think you’re referring to?

Tim Villegas: Exactly.

Dan Habib: That was one of the—there are a couple of different aspects of the film where you get basically what we might call person-centered planning, which is a known topic to a lot of people that I’m sure listen to your podcast. You focus on the person in the middle of their life, and they assemble a team of people around them that they really believe in, that they trust. Then they have the space—someone like Naomi or Micah—to think about their hopes and their dreams and their goals. Then the group comes together and says, “How are we going to help you do this?”

In Naomi’s case specifically, it’s around what is the social capital that you already have in the community? Who do you know? Where are stores and businesses that you frequent? Where do you have friends and relatives? They use that to have this great brainstorm session—a short scene in the film—where they end up coming up with the idea of going to Empire Beauty School as one of her internships. She ends up being very successful there.

Tim Villegas: That was a beautiful, beautiful moment in the film. I see that parallel even as an educator, trying to connect the interests and passions of students with the curriculum. That is definitely something we talk about when we refer to Universal Design for Learning—using those interests and passions as a bridge for engagement.

Dan Habib: I think you see that in Naieer’s story, where art becomes a very important part of his life. That’s also, I think, his career path in a way right now. The fact that he’s given lots of opportunities in high school to pursue his art—his art gets exhibited. We actually had, at the premiere of the film here in New Hampshire where I live, Naieer and his family come up and they did an art exhibit of all his work. He sold out within like ten minutes right after the screening.

So I said, “You’ve got to keep painting because your work is beautiful.” We actually made prints from some of his work and we sell them, and all the proceeds go back to the Henderson School art program. I’m so blown away by his artwork.

Tim Villegas: That’s amazing. Let’s talk a little bit about the data that you mentioned for high school graduation for students with intellectual disabilities. I don’t know what it’s like in New Hampshire as far as what path certain students get put on and at what time. I know in Georgia—this is where I live—it’s difficult because of the way the state rules are. You have to pick a certain path when you get to high school for a diploma.

I know different states have it in different ways, but a lot of times parents are very confused about this. By the time they get to high school, if a student has an intellectual disability and maybe is not able to keep up with the academics or pass the state end-of-grade tests, but they didn’t want to go with a modified curriculum and alternate assessment as part of their educational plan, they’re stuck. Now it’s too late, and they can’t go into some of these transition work programs and stuff like that.

Can you talk a little bit about that—maybe how New Hampshire does it or just in general?

Dan Habib: Sure. I’m definitely not an expert in this area, but I can touch on it a little bit. The reality is that I tend not to judge any family or individual for going their own route—whatever route they feel is appropriate for their family.

What I do look at is the systemic approach, and I get to compare that a lot nationally as I travel and talk to people. For instance, where my son Samuel goes to high school—Concord High School, a public high school—there’s one diploma. There’s no other diploma. It’s not a certificate of attendance, it’s not a state diploma. It’s just the Concord High School diploma.

They work extremely hard to have every single student in the school—whether they have a disability or not, no matter what the disability is—get that diploma and work toward that diploma. They do that in part by trying to create Universal Design for Learning in their classrooms, by doing really effective modifications that are still in line with the general education curriculum but are appropriate for different people’s abilities or disabilities.

I’ve seen that happen in many states. We also don’t have a state exam that you need to take in order to graduate, like it sounds like you might have in Georgia. In New York, they have the Regents Test, which is a big impediment for a lot of students for graduation.

So it really varies tremendously state by state. If you’re living in a place like New York and everything is geared toward passing this Regents Test, you may think that’s the reality everywhere—and it’s not. But you might make decisions early on in your child’s education, saying, “Well, he’s never going to pass the Regents, so we might as well just do an alternate assessment.” And then, as you say, what happens is you really fall off any track that could lead toward a regular high school diploma.

It’s understandable—you’re still hopefully going to get an education—but you’re not going to have a diploma that might get you into the military or into certain jobs or certain colleges. I think it is a real issue. I wish I could wave a magic wand, but I think it’s really around state and local policy, and even at the school level, working with people and their local schools to make sure that the high school diploma is accessible and attainable for virtually every student.

Tim Villegas: Right. What do you think of as far as a strategy for families? What I see in Micah’s situation in the film is that his family was very intent on Micah attending general education classrooms throughout his whole career as a student. It sounds like they had monthly meetings—not only with his support staff—and that continued through post-secondary.

What would be a strategy you would give a family that’s trying to go that route?

Dan Habib: It’s a good point to bring up Micah. Just to clarify, those meetings he was having were actually kind of his circle of support meetings, which Janice and Rich—his parents—helped initiate. They weren’t just support staff; they were actually friends, and they continue to be friends. Now that he’s an adult, some of his support staff could go to those, but they were really kind of organic meetings that started with elementary school peers.

They really did intersect with their commitment and strong belief in inclusive education. Micah was the one who first came home in first grade and said words that forever changed their family’s trajectory: “Why don’t I get to go into the same door as my friends?” They had “special ed” kids going in one door and typical kids going in another. He said, “Why don’t I get to go in the same door?”

He ended up speaking about that quite a bit in his own speaking—“Through the Same Door.” I think that reflects something my wife and I also developed early in Samuel’s life, thankfully, which was a vision for how we wanted him to feel in our community. We wanted him to feel like he belonged in every aspect of our community—in schools, in the family, in the neighborhood.

We couldn’t imagine him feeling like he belonged in our community unless he was in a regular school. When I do talks with family groups and show films, I think the biggest thing is having that vision early on of how you want your child’s life to progress. It doesn’t mean every single family is going to choose inclusive education or 100% inclusive education. There may be families that really tried it and didn’t feel like it was successful.

But I think in most cases, it’s because they didn’t have the right array of supports to make that child feel successful in class. My wife and I did this kind of leadership series when Sam was very young that helped us get through that and have that vision.

A lot of it is just looking at the research and understanding that 30 years of data is irrefutable. Students with disabilities who are included in regular education—in terms of their academic outcomes, social outcomes, communication, behavior, post-secondary, employment—across the board, they do better.

It’s very important for families to know that if they can work with their schools and communities to have a strong approach to having their child included in regular ed, it’s likely that child will end up with better outcomes in all those areas. I think they’ll also have a really strong social network.

I could talk about this for the rest of the hour, but I try not to be too dictatorial about it. I don’t want to sound like I’m lecturing people. I just want people to know the research and also our own experience around how much it’s improved and supported Samuel’s social life.

Tim Villegas: Thank you for speaking to that. I think people need to hear it from lots of different sources. That was amazing.

Where can someone see the film Intelligent Lives?

Dan Habib: We’re doing some really cool new things with this film that we haven’t done before.

First of all, we have some immediate events coming up. I’m heading to Los Angeles on Tuesday, September 11th, and I’ll be showing the film on September 12th and 13th. All this information is on our website: http://intelligentlives.org.

The following week, we’re really excited to have our New York City theatrical premiere. I’ve never done this before, but we’re doing a week-long run in New York starting September 21st. So anybody in the New York area, we’re really encouraging them to check that out.

I’m also doing events at LIU Post on Long Island and in Westchester on the 20th. Then on the 26th of September, I’ll be at the National Press Club in Washington, showing the film with Syracuse University hosting.

We have some really great special events in September, and then in October, it’s showing all over the country. Again, if people check out the website, they can see a list of all the screenings.

One innovative thing we’ve done this year that we’ve never done before—and it’s leading to a lot of screenings—is using a platform called Gather. Gather allows people anywhere in the country, if they have a movie theater in their community, to host a screening of the film for free. All they need to do is rally the troops in their community and get people to buy tickets—maybe 30 or 40 tickets. Once the screening hits a certain number of tickets, it “tips” or happens, and then people just go out to the movies.

You can arrange discussions around them, have panels, organize a resource fair for young adults, or even make it a fundraiser for your local community. We’re really excited about that, and all that information is on our website in the “Host a Screening” area.

Finally, I’m doing events all around the country for the next year. I’ll be all over the place—you can see that on the website.

We just released the education kit of the DVD that schools, universities, and nonprofits can purchase and show the film in their own community—whether it’s a library, university auditorium, or a class. That kit contains both the film and four short films on post-secondary transition that I filmed around the country over the last few years. They’re based on a lot of research around what really helps students with disabilities transition from high school into employment and higher education.

They’re four totally different stories that I filmed everywhere—from an Indian reservation in South Dakota where they’re teaching entrepreneurship skills, to a wonderful program called PROMISE that’s happening all around the country, including Arkansas, where they give students work experience starting at age 14 for 200 hours a summer.

I filmed a young man named Garrett here in New Hampshire who’s doing incredible stuff in high school—leading his own IEP meetings, doing internships with the gym teacher, playing unified sports, inclusive education. He’s kind of a model for all that.

I’m really excited to get these films out there into the world. Everything’s on our website, or our Intelligent Lives Facebook group, or Twitter. We’re pretty active on social media.

Tim Villegas: Fantastic. So if you’re listening, go to http://intelligentlives.org and check out how you can see this film—whether it’s in L.A., New York, D.C., or in your local community. I love the idea of using Gather to promote something in your local community.

Before I let you go, I know people are probably already asking about what’s next. I know you have a whole year of promoting this film. Is that even something that’s on your mind right now?

Dan Habib: Well, it is and it isn’t. You put a film together and people say, “What’s next?” I say, “What’s next is making sure this film gets out there into the world.” It’s tremendous—it’s like a full-time job. I’m traveling almost every week this whole year with this film.

But I am doing a couple of small projects for some outside sources. There’s a university—Millersville University in Pennsylvania—that has a really strong Think College program, one of the programs for students with intellectual disability. I’m doing some work with them, filming their program at Temple University.

I’m doing a couple of other projects. You know what? I’ll give you a little inside scoop. Samuel and I—he’s almost 19 now—we’re thinking about doing some work together, like co-producing, co-directing a project. We don’t have a real hard plan yet, so there’s nothing totally to report out, but it’s definitely something I see as my next project. I just want to spend time with him, and he’s done a lot of wonderful film work on his own. So that’s kind of where I’m thinking my next big project might be.

Tim Villegas: All right. Well, you heard it here first on the Think Inclusive Podcast, right?

Dan Habib: That’s right.

Tim Villegas: Dan Habib, I really appreciate your time and your willingness to speak with us today.

Dan Habib: Thanks, Tim. I always enjoy speaking with you, and I really appreciate the opportunity.

Tim Villegas: That is our show. We would like to thank Dan Habib for being a guest on the Think Inclusive Podcast. Make sure to follow him on Twitter and Facebook and look for a film screening of Intelligent Lives near you.

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From Marietta, Georgia, please join us again on the Think Inclusive Podcast. Thanks for your time and attention.