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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

Juwayriya Adwan, 12, a temporary shelter

It has been two years since I was last inside a proper school. Two years since I listened to the school chime at the institution I attended, sat at my desk and raised my hand during my beloved lesson. Occasionally I still distinctly recollect the auditory and olfactory sensations: powder from the board, sharpener leftovers, joyful sounds in corridors. But my educational institution is gone; it was struck not long after the war began. My textbooks turned to ash, and some of my friends killed.

I was in elementary level on 7 October: the last day I attended classes. That beginning of the day, alert signals screamed through the corridors. Some children cried, others held hands tightly. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even her voice trembled. I remember longing for a routine day; instruction, intermission, a literary performance. Instead, that day signaled the conclusion of my former reality.

Hostilities have claimed innumerable aspects. But the hardest loss of all is education, because that is the loss of the future itself.

Now I dwell alongside my parents, male relatives and female sibling in a packed refuge in al-Mawasi. The temporary partitions flap in the wind, providing no climate control. We line up for water and food. Electricity is a dream and personal space is absent. Aspiration appears brittle.

At evening, I observe the celestial bodies through the gaps of my tent and ponder if my friends see the identical heavens. Some reach out when they can, stating they long for education and have kept their old notebooks; like valuables from a bygone era. I feel remorseful because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once envisioned entering the education field to support young residents learn, even when life was hard. Now I aim for being a writer – to draft, to communicate and to reveal the world what it means to be a minor in Gaza. I want to narrate our accounts of fear and hunger, but also fortitude. Because even here, amid fatality and debris, our expressions persist.

When connectivity is available, I attempt learning digitally. On other occasions, I visit a small tent where helpers educate us arithmetic and Arabic. The sessions are brief – the energy supply stops or the airstrikes begin again but in such times, I sense being. I remember who I was: the young woman who adored mathematics and poetry, who thought knowledge could alter reality.

The war has taken so much; our dwellings, learning centers and kin. I mourned my family member, his wife, and their children. I forfeited my beloved urban area, my previous home, which is nothing but rubble now. But the hardest loss of all is schooling, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

To the global audience, I say this: preserve our aspirations. We seek no sympathy, we require steps. Young residents merit texts, schools and protection. Education is not optional, it is a fundamental entitlement. Gaza is not merely devastation; it is children who persist in hoping under aerial surveillance at night. It is my story and I will keep drafting, even if the sole items remaining is a fractured utensil and a fragment of ripped sheet.

'Students ask: "Teacher, are you safe?"'.

An educator, 40, teacher in central Gaza

I have been instructing in the region for over ten years. Initially in a southern city, then in Deir al-Balah, and currently in this refugee settlement in the central Gaza Strip. Prior to hostilities, I typically educated six classes of about dozens of learners, almost two hundred forty individuals eager to learn.

Instructing them was my mission and happiness in life, and I still remember the twinkle in a student’s eyes when a concept was understood; the type of instance every educator lives for.

I always was convinced education should be full of life. My teaching space was a zone of play, art, and motion. We painted maps, acted out historical events, and turned lessons into stories.

Laughter always filled the room as curiosity replaced fear. Certainly, even in earlier times, local youth were always afraid. My teaching space was a place of safety but after the seventh, all was altered.

My school became a shelter for relatives fleeing the explosives. Not long later, it was attacked and totally demolished. There are very few learning institutions still erect in the region now. For two years, all has been unusual. The hostilities has broken every part of our existence: security, residences, educational centers, dreams. Apprehension and mourning are constant companions.

Many of my learners are now dead – minors who talked about becoming physicians, creatives, and educators. They were refused even the right to exist. Those who are still here live with hunger, eviction and weariness – and nevertheless, they still maintain the will to learn.

Sometimes, when the online access permits, I receive messages from a small number of them. They contact questioning: “Are you safe, instructor?” We exchange short messages, short lessons, tiny sparks of interaction amid the chaos. They ask if situations will ever return to usual. I inform them I am uncertain.

Across the region, educators, helpers and organizations endeavor education in all available spaces: in tents, destroyed learning spaces, or packed refuges. Learning has become an gesture of resistance, a way to express: “Our presence continues.” And provided that we keep acquiring knowledge, we will persist.

Numerous of us are also parents. I am a guardian of {three|several