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'We seek action, not sympathy'.

Juwayriya Adwan, twelve, a temporary shelter

It has been two years since I stepped into a learning environment. Two years since I listened to the school chime at my former school, took my seat and raised my hand during my favourite class. At times I still distinctly recollect the familiar scents and noises: chalk dust, wooden scraps, cheerful echoes. But my school no longer exists; it was struck soon after the hostilities erupted. My books were burned, and companions perished.

I was in elementary level on the seventh of October: the concluding day I went to school. That morning, alert signals screamed through the passageways. Some students wept, others held hands tightly. Our instructor sought to soothe, but even her voice trembled. I remember wishing for a normal day; teaching, intermission, a literary performance. Instead, that day signaled the conclusion of my old life.

Conflict has stolen countless things. But the toughest sacrifice of all is education, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

Now I reside with my mother and father, male relatives and female sibling in a congested safe space in this coastal area. The tent walls move with air currents, failing to insulate. We line up for nourishment and hydration. Power is imaginary and personal space is absent. Aspiration appears brittle.

At evening, I gaze toward the stars through the openings of my shelter and ponder if my friends see the identical heavens. Some contact me when they manage, expressing they yearn for classes and have preserved their previous journals; like valuables from a bygone era. I feel remorseful because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once dreamed of pursuing pedagogy to support Gaza’s children study, even when existence was challenging. Now I aim for being a journalist – to draft, to communicate and to show the world what it represents to be a child in Gaza. I want to share our experiences of anxiety and deprivation, but also fortitude. Because even here, amid death and ruins, our expressions persist.

When connectivity is available, I try to study digitally. Other times, I go to a modest shelter where aid workers teach us math and Arabic. The sessions are brief – the electricity cuts out or the bombing resumes but in those moments, I sense being. I remember who I was: the student who adored mathematics and poetry, who thought education could transform society.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our residences, schools and kin. I lost my uncle, his partner, and their children. I lost my beautiful city, that southern city, which is merely debris now. But the hardest loss of all is schooling, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the international community, I express this: keep our hopes alive. Compassion isn't enough, we demand measures. The youth merit literature, educational facilities and safety. Schooling is not optional, it is a essential privilege. This region is not merely devastation; it is youth who persist in hoping beneath the drones at darkness. It is my story and I will keep drafting, even if all I have left is a broken pencil and a scrap of damaged material.

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

Naglaa Weshah, forty, teacher in central Gaza

I have been educating in the region for more than a decade. First in Khan Younis, then in Deir al-Balah, and now in al-Bureij camp in the middle of the territory. Prior to hostilities, I typically educated multiple groups of about fourty pupils per class, almost two hundred forty individuals eager to learn.

Instructing them was my mission and happiness in reality, and I still recall the gleam in a learner's look when a new idea clicked; the sort of occasion every instructor strives for.

I always was convinced education should be dynamic. My learning environment was a area of play, art, and motion. We created cartographic art, acted out historical events, and turned lessons into stories.

Laughter always occupied the area as curiosity replaced apprehension. Certainly, even in earlier times, young residents were always afraid. My classroom was a protected zone but after the seventh, the situation transformed.

My school became a safe haven for relatives running from the explosives. Shortly after, it was attacked and completely destroyed. There are hardly any educational facilities still erect in this area now. For this period, all has been unusual. The hostilities has broken every facet of our reality: security, residences, educational centers, hopes. Anxiety and sorrow are ever-present realities.

Many of my students are now dead – minors who talked about becoming physicians, artists, and instructors. They were deprived even the entitlement to survival. Those who remain experience hunger, displacement and exhaustion – and yet, they still hold onto the desire for education.

Sometimes, when the connectivity enables, I get in touch with a small number of them. They message inquiring: “Are you safe, instructor?” We communicate short messages, abbreviated teaching, small glimmers of contact amid the turmoil. They ask if situations will ever return to usual. I state to them I am uncertain.

All over Gaza, teachers, volunteers and charities try to teach in all available spaces: in shelters, destroyed learning spaces, or packed refuges. Schooling has become an demonstration of perseverance, a way to say: “We persist.” And provided that we keep acquiring knowledge, we will persist.

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