Your Journey to Doctor is Not Over with Dr. Louis Fletcher
Dr. Louis Fletcher [00:41:09] I respond and make your mind go blank. Yeah, I once I once had a I once had both the senior vice chancellor for Troy University went out. They were betting me to see if they were going to hire me. I didn’t even know I was being interviewed at this point rate there. But he said to me during kind of the conversation we’re having over at his office, he said, I said, how are you with stress? He said, I said, I’m pretty good with stress. He said that was the most he said was the most stressful thing you had to say while the young man was in charge of nuclear weapons. And I passed my dissertation defense. He said, well, you’re good.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:41:47] That will allow that.
Dr. Louis Fletcher [00:41:49] That’ll be OK. You know, it’s not nuclear weapons and dissertation doesn’t shake you for life and everybody that could have a nuclear weapons part. But there’s a certain amount of confidence and a certain amount of surety that comes out of you going to your dissertation defense and your oral comprehensive exams that you can’t get until you do it. And you look at people who have doctorates and they get out there doing the stuff that they do, the ones who’ve gone through a process where they have comps and a dissertation, always stand out among the crowd because that they have a certain confidence in being able to answer questions and pull them from their whole pantheon of things, they’ve learned for that. Now, if you’re doing it right, you’re going to become a doctor who is a lifelong learner, so you’re not become this person who’s still talking about things from twenty years ago. And I’ve met those guys and those guys worked for me and had to say, hey, you got to get up, get up to date the kids who are kids, these are master students, and they don’t need to have my class on the overhead projector put out there for them. They’ve been a computer since you came across the stage. They got hooded. So, it’s one of those things where you’ve got to let people know that it’s not your great doctor the day you graduate and you’re ready to learn five years after you’re probably a peak. If you stop learning five years after, you’re going to start going downhill, keep your peaks going. So, keep learning, keep adding, keep getting things right there. So, you’re credible.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:43:09] Yeah. Yes, it’s true, and I think that that notion of I’ve never been the nuclear missile officer, but I would think the dissertation with the with the better experience for you from the stress, because I’m assuming as a nuclear missile officer, you’ve got to rely on your training. But with this other thing, you had to rely on your resourcefulness and your resilience. And that’s something, you know, you’ve always got you face a new thing that you weren’t trained on and that you can say, I don’t have that external support. I don’t have training in this, but if you know that you’re resilient and resourceful, doesn’t matter if you have training is one of the things that I’ve heard from so many people on this podcast is the best thing they got out of their doctoral program was they got really good at learning how to learn. And that’s a really important skill set to have
Dr. Louis Fletcher [00:44:03] a roster spot on with that with the nuclear weapons. I was I was a trained killer, as they said back then. We went to the message air command. They taught us everything we could do to put through the pressure cooker. We did missile simulations in terms of, you know, how to fight nuclear war and, you know, with stimulus and response box at that point. And when I’m doing a dissertation defense and I’m doing the comprehensive exams, it’s all me. It’s my script is where I want to go. And then it gets out into my interpretation of things. So, yeah, that’s a that’s a great distinction to pull out right there.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:44:35] Yeah. Now tell me about some of the stuff that you’re doing currently. I know we talked a little before about what you’re doing now for restorative practice and this sort of thing to tell folks a little bit more about what you’re what you’re into these days.
Dr. Louis Fletcher [00:44:48] Yeah, I work in a school district. I came to the school district for interesting reasons and was having some problems with harassment, discrimination. And the DOJ was here with oversight. So, they needed so they had made an attempt before to rectify that. But they’re K-12 people and they are wired different than a person like me. I didn’t spend my whole career in it. I was I was a missile launch officer, international relations, all those different things. So, I came up with a different lens. So, I was able to show long story short, get them off of the monitoring program with the Department of Justice. During that process, I started to learn about what the recommendations of the Department of Justice were to be able to get out of that one of those restorative justice. And I started the study that I learned about what sort of practices because restorative justice is when something happens and how you respond, and it makes you reactive. That is a part of restorative practices with practices you’re proactive. So, you make sure you set the conditions where you have the right policies to give a fair process. You give the expectations to people, so you understand where they stand with that. You always have the sentiment to bring a person back into the community versus trying to marginalize them, to push them out of the community, to say this is good stuff. So, I said I applied it to the district, and I got a grant from the Department of Defense for one point five million dollars to be able to implement this in the school district for five years. And I’ve got with people from the International Institute of Restorative Practices. So, through that association, I said, well, teach me your basic course, teach me your advanced course. And then I became I went through to the point where I became an instructor of restorative practices and in our district of about 40 qualified instructors, because I saw that as something that was needed and something that needed to be built. And we put that in place. So, it’s going down another different line of inquiry and it kind of goes like your dissertation process, like what is needed and how do we build it and how do we implement it. And then from that, I was able to go to different places around the nation and talk about restorative practices. Last year went over to Belgium, actually, a place called Courtright Belgium, and went to the international conference where international students, sort of a European conference and spoke about it there, because it is something that the United States actually behind and is something that started, you know, not only in New Zealand around the Maori culture, but it’s a whole thing of saying that these people are people when they do something wrong, they do get accountability. Accountability does happen. What happens after accountability is that we need to see how we bring them back in the community because the community is always fractured. Are we going to keep doing it, picking up pieces and pieces and pieces? So, we’re just like, you know, diffused across, you know, and there’s no community. So, we can’t just keep throwing away people. We have to reintegrate people and understand where they are and have them understand the harm they did and make amends for the harm they did and make sure that we pay attention. The person who was harmed in that whole process to make sure they’re still hold to because of times what we do in traditional Western society or that person who did something, we put them in jail, or we gave them an electric chair. You should feel better now. Right now, you’ve done nothing to deal with what happened to me, right?
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:47:44] Exactly right. Yeah, there was I don’t know the answer to the last piece that you were just mentioning there, but there was an article I was reading recently that I don’t have an answer to it, but it was just upsetting with the pandemic. They let a lot of folks who were who’ve been convicted of various crimes let them out of prison to help because the cold was sweeping through these prisons like wildfire, that they think the herd, so to speak, and let people out of prison they’re on. House arrest, I guess they were monitored, but they went out and they got jobs, they did the things they were supposed to be doing, they held themselves accountable to the to what they were required to do, recidivism rates way below the general population. So, it seems like, OK, we reached our goal and now several of them are in the process. They’re facing the possibility of being recalled to prison soon to serve out the rest of their term. And I don’t know what your practice or your expertise would say on that, but that just strikes me as being contrary to what we’re trying to accomplish. We should be getting folks reintegrated into society, as you mentioned.
Dr. Louis Fletcher [00:48:50] I agree. And it that’s a great one to bring up right there, because what happens is that you’ve given up when we have tough times, we start. It’s funny. We have tough times. We start to relax the rules and sometimes we find out some of the rules we shouldn’t have. But those folks are out there doing, especially if they’re nonviolent offenders and you’re out there doing what they need to do at some point. We’ve got to say you’ve got it. And that’s what I like. You know what? These laws that kind of keep a person as a felon, I said, if you’ve done your whole time and you served your time, then you should be able to be a person who doesn’t have to take a bath to say that you did this. You were criminal charges before because you’ve done it and you should be able to do the job. A lot of times and make the things that make them be recidivists are the fact that they are always got the scarlet letter on them. You can’t get a job. You can’t keep a job because that people go like, well, I don’t know if I trust you, I’m. So, yes, in a situation where people have gotten out and they probably have done yeoman’s work and help people out during a pandemic and that kind of thing, and people have said, well, we need a few of you back in jail now.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:49:46] That’s why they’re not right. I don’t want to marginalize because this is a real social issue. But I was watching with my kids the Antman movie not long ago. At the very beginning of that, this guy he had, he broke the law for four for social. What do I want to call it? You know, it was a protest, basically something where people were being treated unjustly. And he, I think, stole some money to give it back Robin Hood style or something when he goes to jail, comes out of jail and his roommate’s talking to him about how hard it is going to be for reintegrating. Like, I got a master’s degree in electrical engineering. I’ll be fine to see where he’s working at Baskin Robbins. So. Right. But he’s got a job. He’s working at Baskin Robbins. One minute later, cut to the scene where his manager is telling him how much he thinks he was cool, the crime that he can. Yes, I remember that. You’re fired, David. We can’t have you here. And then he asked his roommate, who was also an ex-con. OK, tell me about that job you had, meaning the heist that you want us to pull, because that’s where it is. If you can’t get honest work, you have to get this honest work. Right.
Dr. Louis Fletcher [00:50:45] And that’s where we’re putting this. We’re putting people when we don’t recognize that. And then working with our district is unique because we apply restorative practices not only to our students, but also to our staff, because it is good for the students and good for staff. And if you live it, you don’t understand. They’re going to advocate for better Robeck that films that people get into situations. A lot of times it comes with the trauma that happened in the home or happened in a neighborhood or happened with that. It leads you to a place where you act out. You finally end up getting into prison. So, what we’re trying to do is get to the beginning of that whole ordeal and make sure that students understand how to relate with each other, how to talk to each other, understand that bad things will happen, but also understand that if any of me are you if we judge by the worst thing we did in our life, we are bad people, but we learn how to come out of that. That’s why I tell adults, you have to tell kids where you came from and how you got there, because they look at us like we’re perfect. If you’ve got a car and a house and you can afford the fast food, like, hey, you’re some like you’ve
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:51:39] talked with us. You don’t understand me at that point, right?
Dr. Louis Fletcher [00:51:42] You have to tell him a play.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:51:43] Let him know. Yeah.
Dr. Louis Fletcher [00:51:44] Have a good buddy of mine who lectures with me when we go out there and present. He’s a chief of security. Fantastic guy. He will tell them so, when I was in high school, I was expelled. He said he will tell them I was in I was in jail before, but he came back to be a police officer in Maryland. He came back to be a sheriff’s deputy. And he’s a retired police officer right now. Yeah, him telling kids where he came from does has more power than you would imagine.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:52:12] I would imagine we have a whole lot I mean; people talk about how excited people got when Kamala Harris was inaugurated as vice president because they got to see themselves in that in that position. But that’s like a one like a one-shot moon-shot kind of thing. I mean, when the person sitting there face to face talking with you, you got to know at some level there’s other people around that I’m talking to that have done the same thing when she’s the only one that’s been vice president. But, yeah, there’s a lot of them
Dr. Louis Fletcher [00:52:43] that have kick butt, but it’s every bit as everyday people out there, like Dave Watson, who is a white guy from Baltimore outside of Baltimore. I’m a black kid and I’m a black guy with a black kid in Washington, D.C. in Anacostia. We both came from pretty turbulent areas and stuff like that, but we work together, and we lecture, and we go out there and talk to people together and they can see these are real people standing in front of us and they didn’t get silver spoons in their mouths. So would that unless you know that these kids are getting on the path or even adults who are getting on a path where there were things not functioning for them, you got to get in there and let them understand that, you know, if you go through all security, it won’t be accountability. So, their suspensions, there’s expulsions, but even when kids get expelled, expelled, we still help them after that with the kids who got expelled and we have one kid right now who can graduate from high school one semester early and he actually got expelled. But when he got expelled, it turned the lights back on. He had his accountability. He started doing his work. He made up his assignment. And this kid’s a football player. So, he also got back into his athletics and that kind of thing. So don’t let the don’t let the expulsion or the suspension or the arrest be the end of your story. Understand that if you do the work, you can come back and you can be somebody
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:53:52] And you get to write the story no matter what page you’re own. You can.
Dr. Louis Fletcher [00:53:56] Absolutely.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:53:56] Start writing the story even if you think it’s been written for you, you can always start writing the story no matter what page you’re on.
Dr. Louis Fletcher [00:54:02] Yeah, and sometimes you got to wake up and say, what do you want to be doing? And that’s why I say, you know, give me a reason why I’m back here and doing law school. They people. So, you’ve got enough degrees. Why are you doing that? I said, because I want to know the next thing that I want to do. I want to make sure that we have is in dispute resolution. I want to make sure that we free people up from those things that are just simply, like you said, with the prisoners, that we’ve got to put you back to my well, there’s a statue to say something. We’ve got to free people up from dogmatically being abused by the law.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:54:31] Yeah.
Dr. Louis Fletcher [00:54:32] And I don’t mean in a way, I’m pro law enforcement. All I can think what I’m saying is that sometimes laws don’t serve people who don’t have the means to be able to do the system with a fancy lawyer.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:54:40] This is we… Need to find somebody who can make the call because it seems like everybody in this process knows that this is the wrong call. But there are rules, and we got a lot of functionaries in our society. They just they have to do what they’re supposed to do. And, you know, the warden can’t say, I can’t I’m not going to issue that order with me. But I’m sure the warden is going to be calling these people that because that’s his job at some point. And he I can’t do that because he’s not allowed to get fired.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:55:07] Right. Is this the right thing? And who can advocate to and when I say about law enforcement that there’s some bad stuff that’s going on out there and we’ve seen it and we don’t need to throw all law enforcement away. We need to do with say, “Teach them how to resolve disputes at the street level with something other than guns and that kind of thing.” And that’s not saying a bad thing is like, you know, the more people, anybody to stay alive has a chance. And we want to make sure more people stay alive to have a chance and that kind of thing. But we can’t be we can’t get to a place of hate with our police officers and our law enforcement, our great people through this try to do their jobs, too. And like you said with the warden and somebody tell them, that’s what you got to do. We got to do is make sure that those things that come down from on high are from policy. Tell them, well, if a person’s been out for six months because of pandemic and they’re doing well and they’re charges, you know, low level drugs, maybe marijuana and is now legal in your state, let’s let them go. Because now,
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:55:57] Even if they committed a legitimate crime and it’s still a legitimate crime, again, the point is to get them back and reintegrated into society, make sure they’re not doing it again. And I don’t remember the exact numbers, but there were enough people out there where these were good statistical numbers. The recidivism rate was lower among those people than the general population. I don’t know if they’re looking at the same time frames or not. So that’s a question. Maybe I might be down in the pandemic in general, I don’t know.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:56:23] But that’s part of the community. You try to preserve the community and that’s what probably would happen. And it kind of goes back out of the community and put them back in prison is not going to make them feel akin to that community. Now, I would say even 80 percent, those guys who got part of the community will endure and say, when I get out of going back to my community and everything would be fine. But that 20 percent, like you said with the Antman movie, see how they put you back in jail. We got some jobs for you over here
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:56:48] Going back in jail anyway. Why don’t we we’ll take care of you say. Well, yeah. Yeah, you’ve got. The only person that’s going to possibly serve by pulling these people back in jail is the victims that you mentioned earlier, and I don’t know that it serves them. I mean, I can see some people saying, why are you letting him out of jail? I’m not getting my mother back or I’m not getting, you know, my house burned down or whatever it might be that was taken from me. And I can understand that. But as a society, we’ve also got to understand that justice is about balance, is not about retribution.
Dr. Louis Fletcher [00:57:22] And also the power of forgiveness, because I have a whole thing that I talk about in a presentation I do about forgiveness. And it’s not a matter of saying letting people off the hook, but forgiveness is something you do for yourself. There’s this study to show that when you don’t forgive, it affects your body, puts cortisol all through it. It can lead to different ailments, cancers, and things like that. So, when you forgive somebody who’s done something wrong to you is not because you’re saying, all right, there’s no accountability, you’re off the hook, I’m forgiving you so that I don’t have to go through the process of killing myself with my stress and that kind of thing. And I said it goes to like a private link for it later. If they take a look at my TED talk on the lake, they can see a little bit what I’m talking about right there about forgiveness and the horrible thing that happened to my family in terms of losing my brother. But what came out of that is it was domestic partner violence. The woman he was with killed him and it left me with left two boys without a dad right there. He has other kids who were older, and they had situations right there. But the two boys I got were 10-year-old and 14-year-old. So that those are like my sons now and now they’re 18 and 15. And the 18-year-old was about to go to college at the University of Arizona. He’s a fantastic young man. And his last two semesters right here in high school, he’s gotten 4.0, went all because the trauma is being lifted from him. He had a hard time starting out in high school. The younger one, 15 year. Oh, my goodness, he’s six foot four, 190 pounds and he’s already getting showcase letters from football teams in Division two with it. But I’ll probably Division one by the time he’s a senior. But with the whole thing, that’s not the most impressive thing about him. The most impressive thing about him is that he was having a hard time being able to read and understand when we first got him to the house. And it was kind of funny. My wife said to him the other day when she said, how was the PSAT? And he said, well, it was much easier now to know how to read.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:59:11] Funny how that works, you know?
Dr. Louis Fletcher [00:59:14] So forget about physical size, all the stuff that’s all gravy and whatever, if you can do that stuff right there. But the fact that, you know, giving them an opportunity coming out of this tragedy and trauma and having some counseling and everything that goes like that gives them an opportunity to understand that life can be different. And whatever path you’re on can be changed by the fact that your own force will concentration and there’s going to be hard times and crying and upset and frustration, just like with a dissertation trying to get you get your doctorate, but you just got to get it done. You just got to get it done.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:59:44] Life’s not easy. Just keep going to make sure if you play in the right direction, it is absolutely to keep that anger going. That’s not going to take you where you want to go. It will not. But you keep going in the direction is positive where you want to take your life. Well, that’s true. The dissertation and anything any other challenges you might face as well.
