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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

Juwayriya Adwan, twelve, a temporary shelter

It has been two years since I entered a learning environment. Two years since I listened to the school chime at the institution I attended, took my seat and participated actively during my favourite class. Sometimes I still clearly recall the familiar scents and noises: chalk dust, sharpener leftovers, cheerful echoes. But my school no longer exists; it was bombed soon after the conflict started. My learning materials incinerated, and companions perished.

I was in elementary level on the seventh of October: the final day I attended classes. That morning, alert signals sounded through the halls. Some students wept, others clasped palms firmly. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even her tone wavered. I remember hoping for a ordinary day; teaching, recess, a literary performance. Instead, that day became the last page of my former reality.

The war has taken so much. But the most painful deprivation of all is education, because that is the loss of the future itself.

Now I live with my guardians, two brothers and female sibling in a packed refuge in al-Mawasi. The shelter coverings move with air currents, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We line up for sustenance and drinks. Energy access is fantasy and personal space is absent. Aspiration appears brittle.

At night, I gaze toward the celestial bodies through the gaps of my shelter and ponder if my friends see the comparable vista. Some message me when they manage, saying they yearn for classes and have preserved their old notebooks; like relics of a vanished time. I feel ashamed because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once dreamed of becoming a teacher to assist local youth learn, even when life was hard. Now I aim for being a reporter – to compose, to communicate and to show the world what it represents to be a child in this region. I want to narrate our accounts of anxiety and deprivation, but also courage. Because even in this place, amid death and ruins, our expressions persist.

When there’s some internet, I attempt learning via the web. Other times, I go to a tiny space where volunteers educate us mathematics and language. The sessions are brief – the energy supply stops or the bombing resumes but in these instances, I sense being. I recall who I was: the girl who loved numbers and poems, who believed education could transform society.

The war has taken so much; our dwellings, educational institutions and kin. I lost my uncle, his wife, and their young ones. I lost my beautiful city, that southern city, which is nothing but rubble now. But the hardest loss of all is schooling, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

To the world, I say this: don’t let our dreams die. We don’t want pity, we require steps. Gaza’s children deserve books, learning environments and protection. Learning is not a luxury, it is a essential privilege. The territory is not merely devastation; it is youth who continue to aspire amid unmanned aircraft at evening. It is my narrative and I will keep drafting, even if the sole items remaining is a broken pencil and a piece of torn paper.

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

Naglaa Weshah, forty, teacher in central Gaza

I have been teaching in this area for over ten years. Originally in a southern city, then in Deir al-Balah, and presently in this refugee settlement in the heart of the region. Prior to hostilities, I typically educated multiple groups of about fourty pupils per class, almost two hundred forty individuals enthusiastic about knowledge.

Teaching them was my mission and happiness in reality, and I still recollect the twinkle in a learner's look when a new idea clicked; the type of instance every teacher cherishes.

I always believed education should be full of life. My learning environment was a space of play, aesthetics, and movement. We painted maps, performed past occurrences, and turned lessons into stories.

Joy always occupied the area as curiosity replaced fear. Yes, even before the war, local youth were always afraid. My learning environment was a secure location but after that day, all was altered.

My learning center became a safe haven for families running from the explosives. Not long later, it was struck and totally demolished. There are very few schools still erect in Gaza now. For this period, everything has been abnormal. The conflict has broken every aspect of our lives: security, homes, learning places, hopes. Apprehension and mourning are ever-present realities.

A significant number of my learners are now deceased – children who talked about dreaming of physicians, painters, and educators. They were deprived even the right to exist. Those who are still here live with malnutrition, eviction and exhaustion – and yet, they still hold onto the thirst for knowledge.

Occasionally, when the connectivity enables, I hear from a handful of them. They write asking: “Are you OK, instructor?” We communicate short messages, abbreviated teaching, minor flashes of interaction amid the chaos. They inquire if circumstances will ever return to usual. I inform them I don’t know.

Across this territory, teachers, volunteers and charities endeavor education in all available spaces: in temporary structures, damaged classrooms, or packed refuges. Education has become an demonstration of perseverance, a way to declare: “We persist.” And so long as we keep acquiring knowledge, we will persist.

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