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'We seek action, not sympathy'.

Juwayriya Adwan, 12, Khan Younis

It has been two years since I stepped into a learning environment. That long since I listened to the morning bell at the institution I attended, sat at my desk and raised my hand during my preferred subject. At times I still vividly remember the auditory and olfactory sensations: chalk dust, pencil shavings, joyful sounds in corridors. But my educational institution is gone; it was struck shortly after the conflict started. My learning materials incinerated, and some of my friends killed.

I was in elementary level on that fateful day: the last day I went to school. That beginning of the day, air raid sirens blared through the halls. Some pupils sobbed, others held hands tightly. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even her tone wavered. I remember longing for a routine day; instruction, intermission, a verse presentation. Instead, that day became the last page of my old life.

Conflict has stolen countless things. But the toughest sacrifice of all is learning, because that is the loss of the future itself.

Now I dwell alongside my mother and father, siblings and sister in a packed refuge in al-Mawasi. The temporary partitions sway with breezes, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We queue for sustenance and drinks. Power is imaginary and personal space is absent. Hope feels fragile.

At evening, I observe the night lights through the openings of my temporary home and ponder if my friends see the identical heavens. Some contact me when they manage, expressing they long for education and have preserved their previous journals; like relics of a vanished time. I feel ashamed because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once dreamed of becoming a teacher to assist Gaza’s children study, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I dream of being a journalist – to draft, to communicate and to reveal the world what it means to be a young person in the Strip. I want to narrate our accounts of apprehension and need, but also bravery. Because even here, amid fatality and debris, our voices refuse to be silent.

When connectivity is available, I endeavor to educate myself digitally. Other times, I visit a modest shelter where helpers educate us mathematics and language. The instruction is limited – the energy supply stops or the attacks recommence but in these instances, I feel alive. I recall who I was: the student who loved numbers and poems, who thought education could transform society.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our homes, learning centers and families. I lost my paternal relative, his spouse, and their offspring. I lost my beloved urban area, my previous home, which is nothing but rubble now. But the hardest loss of all is schooling, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

To the international community, I state this: preserve our aspirations. We seek no sympathy, we want action. Gaza’s children are entitled to literature, schools and safety. Learning is not a luxury, it is a basic right. Gaza is not only destruction; it is children who continue to aspire under aerial surveillance at darkness. It is my story and I will keep drafting, even if my only possessions is a damaged writing tool and a scrap of damaged material.

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

An educator, 40, teacher in a refugee camp

I have been teaching in this area for more than a decade. Initially in Khan Younis, then in a different town, and presently in the central camp in the middle of the territory. Prior to hostilities, I used to teach several sets of about dozens of learners, almost two hundred forty individuals eager to learn.

Teaching them was my mission and happiness in reality, and I still remember the sparkle in a learner's look when a knowledge was acquired; the type of instance every educator cherishes.

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

Merriment always occupied the area as curiosity displaced apprehension. Yes, even prior to conflict, young residents were always frightened. My teaching space was a protected zone but after 7 October, the situation transformed.

My school became a safe haven for families fleeing the aerial attacks. Not long later, it was targeted and entirely ruined. There are very few schools left standing in the region now. For this period, everything has been abnormal. The war has destroyed every part of our reality: protection, residences, educational centers, hopes. Anxiety and sorrow are ever-present realities.

A significant number of my pupils are now dead – minors who spoke of becoming physicians, painters, and teachers. They were deprived even the right to exist. Those who are still here endure hunger, displacement and exhaustion – and nevertheless, they still maintain the desire for education.

At times, when the internet allows, I hear from a small number of them. They message asking: “Are you OK, educator?” We share concise phrases, miniature instruction, small glimmers of interaction amid the turmoil. They inquire if circumstances will ever revert to standard. I inform them I don’t know.

Throughout the region, instructors, aid workers and organizations try to teach wherever possible: in temporary structures, destroyed learning spaces, or packed refuges. Learning has become an gesture of resistance, a way to say: “We persist.” And so long as we continue learning, we will remain.

Many of us are also caregivers. I am a parent of {three|several