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'We seek action, not sympathy'.

A young student, 12, Khan Younis

For the past 24 months since I stepped into a proper school. That long since I heard the school chime at my former school, occupied my place and raised my hand during my favourite class. Occasionally I still vividly remember the auditory and olfactory sensations: writing residue, wooden scraps, laughter echoing down the halls. But my educational institution is gone; it was struck shortly after the hostilities erupted. My learning materials incinerated, and companions perished.

I was in elementary level on 7 October: the final day I attended classes. That beginning of the day, alert signals screamed through the corridors. Some students wept, others gripped each other. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even she sounded shaky. I remember hoping for a routine day; teaching, recess, a literary performance. Instead, that day became the last page of my previous existence.

Hostilities have claimed innumerable aspects. But the toughest sacrifice of all is learning, because that is the loss of the future itself.

Now I dwell alongside my parents, siblings and sister in a congested safe space in al-Mawasi. The tent walls move with air currents, failing to insulate. We line up for nourishment and hydration. Energy access is fantasy and privacy doesn’t exist. Aspiration appears brittle.

At night, I look up at the celestial bodies through the openings of my temporary home and question if my friends see the same sky. Some reach out when they manage, expressing they yearn for classes and have kept their former exercise books; like valuables from a bygone era. I feel ashamed because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once dreamed of entering the education field to support local youth acquire knowledge, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I dream of being a journalist – to write, to talk and to demonstrate the world what it represents to be a minor in the Strip. I want to narrate our accounts of anxiety and deprivation, but also bravery. Because even here, amid death and ruins, our expressions persist.

When there’s some internet, I endeavor to educate myself via the web. Sometimes, I attend a modest shelter where aid workers educate us mathematics and language. The lessons are short – the electricity cuts out or the bombing resumes but in such times, I experience vitality. I recall who I was: the girl who loved numbers and poems, who believed knowledge could alter reality.

The war has taken so much; our homes, educational institutions and families. I lost my paternal relative, his wife, and their young ones. I lost my beautiful city, that southern city, which is only ruins now. But the hardest loss of all is education, because without it, our prospects disappear.

To the global audience, I say this: don’t let our dreams die. We don’t want pity, we demand measures. The youth deserve books, educational facilities and security. Schooling is not a luxury, it is a essential privilege. The territory is not merely devastation; it is children who still dream under aerial surveillance at night. It is my narrative and I will keep drafting, even if my only possessions is a broken pencil and a scrap of damaged material.

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

Naglaa Weshah, forty, teacher in al-Bureij camp

I have been instructing in this area for more than a decade. First in a southern city, then in Deir al-Balah, and currently in this refugee settlement in the central Gaza Strip. Prior to hostilities, I regularly instructed several sets of about dozens of learners, hundreds of eager students keen on education.

Teaching them was my mission and happiness in life, and I still recollect the twinkle in a student’s eyes when a knowledge was acquired; the type of instance every teacher lives for.

I always believed education should be full of life. My learning environment was a zone of amusement, aesthetics, and motion. We designed geographical illustrations, performed past occurrences, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Merriment always filled the room as curiosity substituted anxiety. Indeed, even prior to conflict, local youth were always scared. My learning environment was a secure location but after the seventh, the situation transformed.

My school became a safe haven for families fleeing the explosives. Soon, it was struck and completely destroyed. There are almost no educational facilities still erect in Gaza now. For this period, nothing has been normal. The war has destroyed every facet of our existence: security, homes, educational centers, aspirations. Anxiety and sorrow are ever-present realities.

Numerous of my pupils are now deceased – children who talked about aspiring to be physicians, artists, and instructors. They were refused even the entitlement to survival. Those who survive live with starvation, relocation and exhaustion – and yet, they still cling to the will to learn.

Occasionally, when the online access enables, I get in touch with a handful of them. They contact inquiring: “Are you safe, instructor?” We communicate short messages, short lessons, small glimmers of contact amid the disorder. They inquire if circumstances will ever return to usual. I inform them I don’t know.

Across the region, instructors, volunteers and non-profits try to teach in any feasible location: in shelters, damaged classrooms, or crowded shelters. Education has become an gesture of resistance, a way to express: “We are still here.” And as long as we continue learning, we will endure.

A significant number of us are also caregivers. I am a guardian of {three|several