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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

A young student, twelve, al-Mawasi

It has been two years since I stepped into a proper school. Two years since I listened to the morning bell at the institution I attended, occupied my place and answered questions during my favourite class. Occasionally I still distinctly recollect the auditory and olfactory sensations: chalk dust, sharpener leftovers, laughter echoing down the halls. But my school no longer exists; it was targeted shortly after the war began. My books were burned, and several classmates lost.

I was in fifth grade on the seventh of October: the final day I entered the school building. That beginning of the day, alert signals screamed through the corridors. Some students wept, others held hands tightly. Our instructor sought to soothe, but even her voice trembled. I remember hoping for a ordinary day; teaching, intermission, a verse presentation. Instead, that day became the last page of my old life.

Conflict has stolen countless things. But the hardest loss of all is learning, because without it, our prospects disappear.

Now I reside with my guardians, two brothers and female sibling in a packed refuge in Khan Younis. The shelter coverings move with air currents, providing no climate control. We line up for nourishment and hydration. Energy access is fantasy and personal space is absent. Hope feels fragile.

At darkness, I observe the night lights through the openings of my temporary home and ponder if my friends see the same sky. Some reach out when they are able, saying they yearn for classes and have retained their former exercise books; like relics of a vanished time. I feel guilty because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once aspired to entering the education field to support Gaza’s children acquire knowledge, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I aim for being a writer – to write, to speak and to show the world what it means to be a young person in the Strip. I want to narrate our accounts of fear and hunger, but also bravery. Because even here, amid fatality and debris, our voices refuse to be silent.

When online access exists, I endeavor to educate myself via the web. Sometimes, I go to a small tent where volunteers instruct us arithmetic and Arabic. The sessions are brief – the electricity cuts out or the airstrikes begin again but in those moments, I sense being. I recollect who I was: the young woman who loved numbers and poems, who believed education could transform society.

The war has taken so much; our homes, schools and relatives. I mourned my uncle, his spouse, and their offspring. I forfeited my cherished hometown, my previous home, which is nothing but rubble now. But the most painful deprivation of all is schooling, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the world, I express this: preserve our aspirations. We seek no sympathy, we require steps. Gaza’s children merit books, schools and security. Education is not optional, it is a basic right. This region is not only destruction; it is youth who continue to aspire beneath the drones at night. It is my narrative and I will keep drafting, even if the sole items remaining is a damaged writing tool and a piece of torn paper.

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

An educator, forty, teacher in al-Bureij camp

I have been instructing in Gaza for more than a decade. Initially in Khan Younis, then in a different town, and now in the central camp in the heart of the region. Prior to hostilities, I used to teach six classes of about 40 students each, nearly 240 young minds enthusiastic about knowledge.

Instructing them was my purpose and joy in reality, and I still recall the sparkle in a pupil's gaze when a concept was understood; the kind of moment every educator lives for.

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

Laughter always permeated the space as inquisitiveness displaced apprehension. Certainly, even prior to conflict, children in Gaza were always afraid. My classroom was a place of safety but after the seventh, the situation transformed.

My learning center became a refuge for relatives fleeing the bombs. Soon, it was attacked and entirely ruined. There are hardly any educational facilities still erect in Gaza now. For two years, nothing has been normal. The war has shattered every aspect of our lives: protection, residences, learning places, dreams. Anxiety and sorrow are constant companions.

A significant number of my learners are now dead – minors who mentioned aspiring to be physicians, painters, and educators. They were refused even the entitlement to survival. Those who remain endure starvation, eviction and exhaustion – and however, they still maintain the will to learn.

At times, when the online access enables, I hear from a small number of them. They message inquiring: “Are you safe, educator?” We communicate short messages, abbreviated teaching, small glimmers of interaction amid the chaos. They ask if things will ever return to usual. I tell them I have no answer.

Across Gaza, educators, helpers and charities attempt instruction in any feasible location: in temporary structures, damaged classrooms, or packed refuges. Learning has become an demonstration of perseverance, a way to express: “We persist.” And as long as we continue learning, we will remain.

Many of us are also parents. I am a mother of {three|several