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'We seek action, not sympathy'.

Juwayriya Adwan, twelve, Khan Younis

For the past 24 months since I was last inside a real classroom. Two years since I listened to the start-of-class signal at the institution I attended, took my seat and participated actively during my preferred subject. Sometimes I still vividly remember the familiar scents and noises: writing residue, wooden scraps, laughter echoing down the halls. But my learning place was destroyed; it was struck not long after the hostilities erupted. My learning materials incinerated, and some of my friends killed.

I was in fifth grade on that fateful day: the last day I attended classes. That morning, warning alarms blared through the halls. Some students wept, others held hands tightly. Our educator attempted reassurance, but even her tone wavered. I remember longing for a routine day; teaching, recess, a poem recital. Instead, that day became the last page of my old life.

Hostilities have claimed innumerable aspects. But the hardest loss of all is education, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

Now I reside with my guardians, two brothers and female sibling in a packed refuge in al-Mawasi. The temporary partitions sway with breezes, providing no climate control. We line up for water and food. Electricity is a dream and privacy doesn’t exist. Aspiration appears brittle.

At darkness, I observe the celestial bodies through the gaps of my temporary home and wonder if my peers see the identical heavens. Some message me when they manage, stating they yearn for classes and have kept their former exercise books; like relics of a vanished time. I feel guilty because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once aspired to pursuing pedagogy to assist young residents learn, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I dream of being a reporter – to write, to talk and to reveal the world what it means to be a young person in the Strip. I want to narrate our accounts of fear and hunger, but also fortitude. Because even amid these conditions, amid death and ruins, our voices refuse to be silent.

When there’s some internet, I try to study online. On other occasions, I visit a modest shelter where volunteers instruct us math and Arabic. The instruction is limited – the power fails or the airstrikes begin again but in such times, I feel alive. I remember who I was: the young woman who loved numbers and poems, who was convinced learning could change the world.

Hostilities have stolen countless aspects; our dwellings, educational institutions and families. I grieved for my uncle, his partner, and their young ones. I said goodbye to my beautiful city, that southern city, which is merely debris now. But the most painful deprivation of all is learning, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the global audience, I express this: don’t let our dreams die. We seek no sympathy, we want action. The youth deserve texts, learning environments and protection. Schooling is not a luxury, it is a basic right. Gaza is not just ruins; it is minors who persist in hoping amid unmanned aircraft at darkness. It is my story and I will continue writing, even if all I have left is a fractured utensil and a fragment of ripped sheet.

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

An educator, 40, teacher in a refugee camp

I have been educating in Gaza for more than a decade. Originally in a southern city, then in a different town, and presently in the central camp in the central Gaza Strip. In pre-conflict times, I regularly instructed several sets of about dozens of learners, almost two hundred forty individuals enthusiastic about knowledge.

Teaching them was my mission and happiness in existence, and I still recollect the twinkle in a student’s eyes when a concept was understood; the kind of moment every educator cherishes.

I always believed learning should be full of life. My classroom was a zone of play, art, and movement. We created cartographic art, performed past occurrences, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Merriment always permeated the space as curiosity replaced anxiety. Indeed, even before the war, children in Gaza were always afraid. My learning environment was a place of safety but after that day, the situation transformed.

My learning center became a refuge for families fleeing the bombs. Not long later, it was struck and entirely ruined. There are almost no educational facilities still erect in this area now. For this period, nothing has been normal. The war has broken every part of our lives: safety, homes, learning places, hopes. Anxiety and sorrow are perpetual experiences.

A significant number of my students are now lost – children who spoke of becoming physicians, creatives, and instructors. They were denied even the privilege of living. Those who remain live with malnutrition, displacement and weariness – and however, they still maintain the will to learn.

Occasionally, when the internet allows, I hear from a few of them. They contact inquiring: “How are you, educator?” We share short messages, short lessons, small glimmers of contact amid the disorder. They question if situations will ever go back to normal. I inform them I have no answer.

Throughout this territory, instructors, aid workers and organizations endeavor education in all available spaces: in tents, ruined educational areas, or crowded shelters. Education has become an demonstration of perseverance, a way to declare: “We persist.” And as long as we persist in education, we will remain.

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