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'We seek action, not sympathy'.

Juwayriya Adwan, twelve, a temporary shelter

It has been two years since I was last inside a real classroom. 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 vividly remember the sounds and smells: powder from the board, sharpener leftovers, cheerful echoes. But my school no longer exists; it was targeted soon after the war began. My learning materials incinerated, and several classmates lost.

I was in elementary level on that fateful day: the final day I attended classes. That beginning of the day, air raid sirens sounded through the corridors. Some pupils sobbed, others gripped each other. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even her voice trembled. I remember longing for a routine day; teaching, intermission, a verse presentation. Instead, that day became the last page of my old life.

The war has taken so much. But the hardest loss of all is education, because without it, our prospects disappear.

Now I reside with my guardians, two brothers and female sibling in a packed refuge in this coastal area. The temporary partitions flap in the wind, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We queue for water and food. Electricity is a dream and privacy doesn’t exist. Optimism seems delicate.

At night, I look up at the night lights through the openings of my temporary home and question if my companions see the same sky. Some reach out when they can, stating they long for education and have preserved their former exercise books; like treasures from a lost world. I feel guilty because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once envisioned pursuing pedagogy to assist young residents learn, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I aim for being a writer – to draft, to communicate and to reveal the world what it means to be a young person in Gaza. I want to share our experiences of anxiety and deprivation, but also bravery. Because even amid these conditions, amid loss and destruction, our expressions persist.

When there’s some internet, I try to study online. Other times, I attend a tiny space where volunteers instruct us math and Arabic. The instruction is limited – the energy supply stops or the attacks recommence but in those moments, I feel alive. I remember who I was: the girl who loved numbers and poems, who believed learning could change the world.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our homes, educational institutions and families. I mourned my family member, his spouse, and their children. I lost my cherished hometown, my previous home, which is only ruins now. But the most painful deprivation of all is schooling, because without it, our prospects disappear.

To the global audience, I express this: don’t let our dreams die. We seek no sympathy, we want action. The youth deserve literature, schools and security. Learning is not optional, it is a essential privilege. This region is not only destruction; it is youth who continue to aspire amid unmanned aircraft at evening. It is my account and I will continue writing, even if my only possessions is a damaged writing tool and a fragment of ripped sheet.

'They message: "are you OK, teacher?"'.

An educator, forty, teacher in al-Bureij camp

I have been educating in Gaza for over ten years. First in Khan Younis, then in Deir al-Balah, and now in the central camp in the central Gaza Strip. Before the war started, I used to teach multiple groups of about fourty pupils per class, almost two hundred forty individuals keen on education.

Instructing them was my mission and happiness in life, and I still remember the sparkle in a pupil's gaze when a knowledge was acquired; the sort of occasion every teacher lives for.

I always was convinced education should be dynamic. My learning environment was a space of play, creativity, and motion. We designed geographical illustrations, performed past occurrences, and converted teaching into tales.

Merriment always occupied the area as interest displaced apprehension. Certainly, even before the war, children in Gaza were always afraid. My learning environment was a secure location but after 7 October, all was altered.

My educational institution became a refuge for families escaping the aerial attacks. Not long later, it was targeted and totally demolished. There are very few schools remaining intact in Gaza now. For two years, nothing has been normal. The hostilities has broken every part of our lives: safety, residences, educational centers, aspirations. Apprehension and mourning are constant companions.

Many of my pupils are now deceased – children who spoke of dreaming of physicians, creatives, and instructors. They were refused even the right to exist. Those who are still here endure malnutrition, relocation and exhaustion – and nevertheless, they still cling to the desire for education.

Sometimes, when the internet permits, I receive messages from a small number of them. They message questioning: “Are you safe, teacher?” We exchange concise phrases, miniature instruction, small glimmers of interaction amid the turmoil. They question if circumstances will ever revert to standard. I inform them I have no answer.

All over this territory, instructors, aid workers and charities endeavor education in any feasible location: in shelters, ruined educational areas, or congested safe zones. Schooling has become an gesture of resistance, a way to express: “We persist.” And so long as we persist in education, we will endure.

A significant number of us are also parents. I am a mother of {three|several