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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

A young student, 12, al-Mawasi

It has been two years since I was last inside a real classroom. That long since I heard the school chime at my former school, sat at my desk and raised my hand during my beloved lesson. At times I still vividly remember the sounds and smells: writing residue, pencil shavings, laughter echoing down the halls. But my educational institution is gone; it was targeted soon after the conflict started. My textbooks turned to ash, and some of my friends killed.

I was in fifth grade on the seventh of October: the concluding day I entered the school building. That beginning of the day, warning alarms screamed through the passageways. Some students wept, others clasped palms firmly. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even her voice trembled. I remember longing for a routine day; lessons, intermission, a verse presentation. Instead, that day marked the end of my old life.

The war has taken so much. But the hardest loss of all is schooling, because that is the loss of the future itself.

Now I live with my parents, male relatives and sister in a packed refuge in al-Mawasi. The temporary partitions sway with breezes, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We queue for water and food. Electricity is a dream and personal space is absent. Aspiration appears brittle.

At night, I gaze toward the night lights through the holes of my shelter and wonder if my companions see the same sky. Some contact me when they can, expressing they long for education and have retained their former exercise books; like valuables from a bygone era. I feel guilty because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once aspired to becoming a teacher to support Gaza’s children learn, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I hope for being a journalist – to write, to speak and to demonstrate the world what it signifies to be a minor in Gaza. I want to narrate our accounts of anxiety and deprivation, but also courage. Because even amid these conditions, amid death and ruins, our words continue.

When there’s some internet, I attempt learning digitally. On other occasions, I visit a tiny space where aid workers instruct us math and Arabic. The sessions are brief – the electricity cuts out or the airstrikes begin again but in these instances, I experience vitality. I remember who I was: the girl who cherished arithmetic and verse, who was convinced education could transform society.

Hostilities have stolen countless aspects; our homes, educational institutions and relatives. I grieved for my uncle, his spouse, and their children. I forfeited my beloved urban area, that southern city, which is only ruins now. But the most painful deprivation of all is learning, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

To the international community, I say this: don’t let our dreams die. Compassion isn't enough, we demand measures. Gaza’s children are entitled to literature, learning environments and safety. Education is not an extravagance, it is a fundamental entitlement. Gaza is not only destruction; it is youth who continue to aspire amid unmanned aircraft at evening. It is my story and I will persist in composing, even if all I have left is a damaged writing tool and a fragment of ripped sheet.

'Pupils inquire: "Are you alright, educator?"'.

An educator, 40, instructor in a refugee camp

I have been teaching in the region for more than a decade. First in Khan Younis, then in Deir al-Balah, and presently in the central camp in the central Gaza Strip. In pre-conflict times, I typically educated multiple groups of about 40 students each, almost two hundred forty individuals enthusiastic about knowledge.

Educating them was my mission and happiness in reality, and I still recollect the gleam in a student’s eyes when a knowledge was acquired; the sort of occasion every teacher cherishes.

I always was convinced instruction should be vibrant. My classroom was a area of play, art, and activity. We created cartographic art, dramatized bygone episodes, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Laughter always permeated the space as curiosity displaced fear. Yes, even prior to conflict, local youth were always scared. My teaching space was a secure location but after the seventh, everything changed.

My educational institution became a shelter for relatives running from the aerial attacks. Shortly after, it was targeted and completely destroyed. There are hardly any learning institutions left standing in Gaza now. For 24 months, everything has been abnormal. The war has broken every part of our reality: safety, residences, learning places, hopes. Apprehension and mourning are ever-present realities.

Many of my pupils are now dead – youth who spoke of becoming medical professionals, painters, and instructors. They were denied even the privilege of living. Those who remain live with malnutrition, displacement and fatigue – and yet, they still maintain the will to learn.

Occasionally, when the connectivity enables, I hear from a few of them. They contact inquiring: “Are you OK, instructor?” We share concise phrases, abbreviated teaching, small glimmers of connection amid the chaos. They question if circumstances will ever return to usual. I tell them I am uncertain.

Throughout this territory, teachers, helpers and non-profits attempt instruction wherever possible: in shelters, destroyed learning spaces, or congested safe zones. Schooling has become an gesture of resistance, a way to say: “Our presence continues.” And provided that we keep acquiring knowledge, we will persist.

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