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'We seek action, not sympathy'.

A young student, 12, a temporary shelter

For the past two years since I stepped into a learning environment. Two years since I listened to the start-of-class signal at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, occupied my place and answered questions during my beloved lesson. Occasionally I still vividly remember the sounds and smells: chalk dust, wooden scraps, laughter echoing down the halls. But my learning place was destroyed; it was bombed soon after the war began. My books were burned, and companions perished.

I was in elementary level on the seventh of October: the final day I attended classes. That early hours, warning alarms blared through the corridors. Some pupils sobbed, others clasped palms firmly. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even her voice trembled. I remember hoping for a routine day; teaching, recess, a poem recital. Instead, that day became the last page of my old life.

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

Now I dwell alongside my parents, two brothers and sister in a crowded shelter in al-Mawasi. The shelter coverings sway with breezes, providing no climate control. We wait in line for sustenance and drinks. Electricity is a dream and personal space is absent. Aspiration appears brittle.

At darkness, I gaze toward the stars through the openings of my tent and ponder if my friends see the same sky. Some contact me when they can, stating they miss school and have preserved their old notebooks; like relics of a vanished time. I feel remorseful because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once envisioned pursuing pedagogy to help young residents acquire knowledge, even when existence was challenging. Now I dream of being a reporter – to compose, to talk and to show the world what it means to be a minor in the Strip. I want to narrate our accounts of anxiety and deprivation, but also courage. Because even here, amid fatality and debris, our words continue.

When connectivity is available, I endeavor to educate myself via the web. On other occasions, I attend a modest shelter where helpers teach us mathematics and language. The sessions are brief – the electricity cuts out or the airstrikes begin again but in such times, I feel alive. I recall who I was: the young woman who cherished arithmetic and verse, who thought education could transform society.

The war has taken so much; our dwellings, learning centers and families. I lost my uncle, his partner, and their children. I said goodbye to my cherished hometown, my previous home, which is only ruins now. But the hardest loss of all is schooling, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

To the international community, I say this: don’t let our dreams die. We don’t want pity, we require steps. Gaza’s children are entitled to literature, schools and protection. Learning is not optional, it is a essential privilege. This region is not only destruction; it is youth who continue to aspire beneath the drones at evening. It is my story and I will persist in composing, even if my only possessions 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 educating in the region for more than a decade. Initially in that urban area, then in a different town, and now in al-Bureij camp in the heart of the region. Before the war started, I used to teach multiple groups of about 40 students each, almost two hundred forty individuals enthusiastic about knowledge.

Educating them was my mission and happiness in existence, and I still recollect the gleam in a pupil's gaze when a concept was understood; the sort of occasion every educator strives for.

I always believed instruction should be dynamic. My teaching space was a zone of recreation, creativity, and motion. We created cartographic art, dramatized bygone episodes, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Laughter always permeated the space as curiosity displaced fear. Indeed, even before the war, children in Gaza were always frightened. My classroom was a protected zone but after the seventh, all was altered.

My school became a safe haven for households fleeing the aerial attacks. Soon, it was targeted and entirely ruined. There are hardly any schools remaining intact in the region now. For this period, everything has been abnormal. The war has broken every part of our existence: safety, homes, schools, aspirations. Fear and grief are perpetual experiences.

A significant number of my learners are now lost – children who spoke of aspiring to be doctors, creatives, and teachers. They were deprived even the right to exist. Those who survive live with hunger, relocation and fatigue – and yet, they still cling to the will to learn.

Occasionally, when the internet enables, I get in touch with a handful of them. They contact inquiring: “How are you, instructor?” We communicate concise phrases, miniature instruction, small glimmers of interaction amid the disorder. They inquire if things will ever return to usual. I state to them I don’t know.

Across this territory, instructors, volunteers and charities attempt instruction in all available spaces: in shelters, ruined educational areas, or crowded shelters. Education has become an demonstration of perseverance, a way to declare: “We persist.” And as long as we persist in education, we will endure.

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