A teacher in Greece offered hope to young inmates through TV classes - and school enrollment soared

AVLONA, Greece — Setting up a television channel from scratch isn’t the most obvious or easiest thing for a math teacher to do — especially without prior technical knowledge and for use inside of a prison.

But that is exactly the task Petros Damianos, director of the school at Greece’s Avlona Special Youth Detention Center, took on so his students could access the lessons that coronavirus lockdowns cut them off from.

Greek schools have shut, reopened, and closed again over the past year as authorities sought to curtail the spread of the virus. Like their peers across much of the globe, the country’s students adapted to virtual classes.

But the online world isn’t accessible to all.

The Avlona detention center, a former military prison, holds nearly 300 young men aged 18-21. The school Damianos founded there in 2000 now teaches primary grades through to college, following the national curriculum and awarding graduation certificates equivalent to any Greek school.

While attendance is voluntary, the prison school has grown in popularity and saw record enrollment in September, when up to 96% of inmates signed up. But with internet devices banned in their cells, the prison’s students had no way to continue learning when the lockdowns canceled classroom lessons.

“Our teachers couldn’t reach the kids like they reach all other kids in Greece,” said Damianos, a mild-mannered man in his 60s. “I felt ... despair.” Making matters worse, the lockdown ended visits and furlough leave, so inmates “experienced a double prison,” he said.

While access to education is important for all students, it is perhaps even more critical for Avlona’s, some of whom have been convicted and others who are awaiting trial. Many never graduated or even completed primary grades, yet education is the most concrete tool they can use to turn their lives around.

In December, Damianos had an idea: he could reach his students through the televisions in their cells if he could figure out how to create a dedicated TV channel to broadcast their classes.

Technician friends told Damianos it was possible with the necessary equipment. The next hurdle was obtaining the equipment (as shops were also closed during the nationwide lockdown). Then staffers had to learn how to use it.

The school’s music teacher, Nikos Karadosidis, took on the role of technician, using experience from occasional concert tech work and guidance gleaned from YouTube tutorials.

“I very quickly realized that this whole thing is essentially DIY,” Karadosidis said. “With whatever materials you have, with whatever tools you have, to try to do the best you can.”

Through donations, volunteers, and online orders, the staff cobbled together what they needed. A critical piece of equipment — a modulator to transmit the TV signal — ran into delivery delays, so a store lent them an older one. When 200 feet of cable arrived, inmates helped run it from the school to the prison’s central aerial.

One prison classroom was converted into a rudimentary studio, with a hand-held video camera taped to a tripod. Multicolored Christmas lights served as a makeshift recording light, warning those outside to keep quiet during recording sessions.

Within a month, the channel was ready. They named it Prospathodas TV, Greek for “Trying TV.” The pilot program was a half-hour math class. Now the channel operates 24 hours a day, running six hours’ worth of pre-recorded lessons on a loop on weekdays, and eight hours of looped content on weekends.

The teachers record new lessons daily: from math and handicrafts to economics and music. Karadosidis edits into the night and broadcasts the classes the next day, since live broadcasts are still beyond their technical capabilities.

Student M.S. is 21 (under prison regulations, inmates can be identified only by their initials) said that his criminal record - he is serving time for robbery, theft, and beatings- has dashed his dream of teaching literature. But he made it into university and is now studying photography and visual arts.

Having graduated from high school, he doesn’t need to watch Trying TV, but he has followed a class on making purses out of magazine paper and tape. He says the TV channel has become quite popular.

“You run out of (cigarette) filters and you go into the next cell to ask for a filter, and you see five big guys battling with their little paper strips trying to make purses,” he said. “Then you go to the next cell, and someone’s trying to solve an equation.”

Once the pandemic is over, Damianos would like to expand the channel to include documentaries and other worthwhile programs. But stresses that televised lessons can’t deliver what in-person classes do.

“The channel can’t replace the education that takes place in school,” Damianos said. “It’s very important, but it’s not enough.”

At least, though, the channel is offering a respite from the harshness of prison life, with its many barred metal doors, its views of soccer balls caught in coils of razor wire.

“School is something different. It’s a bit more human than the rest of the prison,” said M.S. “We come here and we joke around with our teachers,” he said. “They take care of us.... It’s a bit like a family.”