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'We seek action, not sympathy'.

Juwayriya Adwan, twelve, al-Mawasi

For the past two years since I was last inside a learning environment. That long since I heard the school chime at the institution I attended, sat at my desk and answered questions during my beloved lesson. At times I still clearly recall the familiar scents and noises: chalk dust, wooden scraps, joyful sounds in corridors. But my educational institution is gone; it was targeted shortly after the war began. My books were burned, and companions perished.

I was in the fifth year on 7 October: the concluding day I went to school. That beginning of the day, warning alarms sounded through the corridors. Some pupils sobbed, others held hands tightly. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even her tone wavered. I remember longing for a ordinary day; instruction, intermission, a verse presentation. Instead, that day signaled the conclusion of my former reality.

Conflict has stolen countless things. But the most painful deprivation of all is education, because that is the loss of the future itself.

Now I reside with my guardians, two brothers and female sibling in a congested safe space in this coastal area. The temporary partitions sway with breezes, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We wait in line for nourishment and hydration. Electricity is a dream and privacy doesn’t exist. Optimism seems delicate.

At darkness, I look up at the celestial bodies through the holes of my tent and ponder if my friends see the identical heavens. Some message me when they are able, saying they miss school and have retained their former exercise books; like treasures from a lost world. I feel ashamed because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once envisioned becoming a teacher to assist Gaza’s children study, even when life was hard. Now I aim for being a reporter – to compose, to talk and to demonstrate the world what it represents to be a minor in Gaza. I want to narrate our accounts of fear and hunger, but also courage. Because even here, amid fatality and debris, our expressions persist.

When online access exists, I endeavor to educate myself digitally. Other times, I attend a modest shelter where helpers teach us math and Arabic. The sessions are brief – the electricity cuts out or the attacks recommence but in these instances, I experience vitality. I recollect who I was: the girl who adored mathematics and poetry, who was convinced knowledge could alter reality.

The war has taken so much; our homes, schools and kin. I grieved for my paternal relative, his partner, and their children. I lost my beloved urban area, my previous home, which is merely debris now. But the toughest sacrifice of all is schooling, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the international community, I say this: don’t let our dreams die. We seek no sympathy, we demand measures. Gaza’s children deserve books, educational facilities and safety. Education is not an extravagance, it is a basic right. Gaza is not only destruction; it is children who continue to aspire beneath the drones at evening. It is my narrative and I will keep drafting, even if all I have left is a broken pencil and a fragment of ripped sheet.

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

An educator, forty, instructor in a refugee camp

I have been instructing in the region for a substantial period. Initially in that urban area, then in another location, and now in this refugee settlement in the heart of the region. Before the war started, I regularly instructed six classes of about 40 students each, almost two hundred forty individuals keen on education.

Teaching them was my mission and happiness in life, and I still recall the gleam in a learner's look when a concept was understood; the kind of moment every educator lives for.

I always thought learning should be vibrant. My learning environment was a zone of play, aesthetics, and activity. We painted maps, performed past occurrences, and turned lessons into stories.

Laughter always filled the room as curiosity replaced fear. Indeed, even in earlier times, young residents were always afraid. My classroom was a place of safety but after 7 October, everything changed.

My school became a safe haven for families escaping the aerial attacks. Not long later, it was targeted and totally demolished. There are hardly any schools remaining intact in Gaza now. For 24 months, nothing has been normal. The hostilities has broken every part of our reality: protection, dwellings, educational centers, dreams. Anxiety and sorrow are perpetual experiences.

Many of my pupils are now deceased – youth who talked about becoming medical professionals, artists, and teachers. They were refused even the privilege of living. Those who remain endure malnutrition, eviction and fatigue – and yet, they still maintain the will to learn.

At times, when the internet permits, I receive messages from a small number of them. They write questioning: “Are you OK, teacher?” We communicate concise phrases, miniature instruction, minor flashes of connection amid the turmoil. They inquire if situations will ever return to usual. I state to them I don’t know.

Throughout the region, instructors, aid workers and organizations try to teach in all available spaces: in shelters, damaged classrooms, or packed refuges. Schooling has become an demonstration of perseverance, a way to declare: “We persist.” And provided that we continue learning, we will endure.

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