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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

Juwayriya Adwan, 12, al-Mawasi

For the past two years since I was last inside a real classroom. Two years since I heard the school chime at the institution I attended, occupied my place and answered questions during my favourite class. Sometimes I still clearly recall the auditory and olfactory sensations: powder from the board, sharpener leftovers, joyful sounds in corridors. But my learning place was destroyed; it was bombed not long after the war began. My learning materials incinerated, and companions perished.

I was in elementary level on 7 October: the concluding day I entered the school building. That morning, alert signals blared through the halls. Some students wept, others clasped palms firmly. Our educator attempted reassurance, but even her tone wavered. I remember hoping for a ordinary day; instruction, intermission, a literary performance. Instead, that day marked the end of my previous existence.

The war has taken so much. But the hardest loss of all is learning, because without it, our prospects disappear.

Now I reside with my parents, two brothers and sister in a packed refuge in al-Mawasi. The shelter coverings flap in the wind, failing to insulate. We line up for sustenance and drinks. Electricity is a dream and seclusion is unavailable. Hope feels fragile.

At evening, I look up at the celestial bodies through the gaps of my tent and question if my companions see the identical heavens. Some contact me when they can, expressing they long for education and have retained their previous journals; like relics of a vanished time. I feel guilty because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once aspired to becoming a teacher to assist Gaza’s children study, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I aim for being a journalist – to compose, to speak and to reveal the world what it represents to be a minor in the Strip. I want to tell our stories of anxiety and deprivation, but also fortitude. Because even here, amid loss and destruction, our words continue.

When online access exists, I try to study digitally. On other occasions, I visit a tiny space where helpers educate us arithmetic and Arabic. The instruction is limited – the electricity cuts out or the attacks recommence but in these instances, I experience vitality. 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 residences, learning centers and relatives. I lost my family member, his spouse, and their young ones. I lost my beautiful city, my previous home, which is nothing but rubble now. But the most painful deprivation of all is education, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

To the global audience, I say this: preserve our aspirations. We seek no sympathy, we require steps. Young residents are entitled to texts, educational facilities and protection. Schooling is not an extravagance, it is a basic right. The territory is not just ruins; it is minors who still dream amid unmanned aircraft at darkness. It is my account and I will persist in composing, even if all I have left is a damaged writing tool and a piece of torn paper.

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

An educator, forty, instructor in al-Bureij camp

I have been teaching in the region for more than a decade. First in that urban area, then in Deir al-Balah, and presently in the central camp in the central Gaza Strip. Before the war started, I regularly instructed several sets of about dozens of learners, hundreds of eager students eager to learn.

Teaching them was my vocation and delight in existence, and I still remember the gleam in a pupil's gaze when a new idea clicked; the kind of moment every instructor cherishes.

I always believed instruction should be vibrant. My classroom was a zone of recreation, creativity, and movement. We created cartographic art, dramatized bygone episodes, and turned lessons into stories.

Joy always permeated the space as curiosity displaced fear. Indeed, even prior to conflict, local youth were always scared. My classroom was a secure location but after the seventh, everything changed.

My learning center became a refuge for households running from the explosives. Not long later, it was targeted and entirely ruined. There are hardly any schools still erect in the region now. For this period, all has been unusual. The war has destroyed every facet of our reality: security, homes, schools, dreams. Anxiety and sorrow are ever-present realities.

A significant number of my pupils are now deceased – children who talked about aspiring to be doctors, creatives, and teachers. They were refused even the privilege of living. Those who remain live with starvation, relocation and weariness – and nevertheless, they still hold onto the desire for education.

At times, when the internet allows, I hear from a small number of them. They contact inquiring: “Are you safe, educator?” We exchange short messages, short lessons, minor flashes of contact amid the turmoil. They ask if circumstances will ever return to usual. I state to them I am uncertain.

Throughout this territory, instructors, aid workers and organizations endeavor education wherever possible: in temporary structures, damaged classrooms, or crowded shelters. Education has become an demonstration of perseverance, a way to declare: “Our presence continues.” And as long as we continue learning, we will remain.

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