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'We seek action, not sympathy'.

Juwayriya Adwan, 12, al-Mawasi

For the past two years since I was last inside a proper school. Two years since I heard the school chime at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, sat at my desk and raised my hand during my preferred subject. Occasionally I still vividly remember the sounds and smells: chalk dust, sharpener leftovers, laughter echoing down the halls. But my school no longer exists; it was struck soon after the war began. My textbooks turned to ash, and some of my friends killed.

I was in the fifth year on that fateful day: the final day I attended classes. That morning, warning alarms screamed through the corridors. Some students wept, others clasped palms firmly. Our educator attempted reassurance, but even she sounded shaky. I remember hoping for a ordinary day; instruction, recess, a verse presentation. Instead, that day marked the end of my former reality.

Hostilities have claimed innumerable aspects. But the hardest loss of all is schooling, because that is the loss of the future itself.

Now I dwell alongside my mother and father, male relatives and sister in a congested safe space in al-Mawasi. The temporary partitions sway with breezes, providing no climate control. We wait in line for water and food. Power is imaginary and privacy doesn’t exist. Optimism seems delicate.

At darkness, I gaze toward the celestial bodies through the openings of my shelter and question if my friends see the same sky. Some message me when they can, saying they yearn for classes and have preserved their previous journals; like relics of a vanished time. I feel guilty because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once dreamed of becoming a teacher to support Gaza’s children acquire knowledge, even when existence was challenging. Now I dream of being a reporter – to draft, to speak and to reveal the world what it signifies to be a minor in this region. I want to narrate our accounts of fear and hunger, but also courage. Because even amid these conditions, amid death and ruins, our words continue.

When connectivity is available, I attempt learning online. On other occasions, I attend a modest shelter where volunteers educate us math and Arabic. The lessons are short – the electricity cuts out or the bombing resumes but in those moments, I feel alive. I remember who I was: the girl who loved numbers and poems, who was convinced education could transform society.

The war has taken so much; our homes, schools and relatives. I lost my family member, his spouse, and their young ones. I said goodbye to my cherished hometown, 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 state this: preserve our aspirations. We seek no sympathy, we demand measures. Gaza’s children deserve literature, learning environments and protection. Learning is not optional, it is a fundamental entitlement. The territory is not merely devastation; it is minors who persist in hoping under aerial surveillance at darkness. It is my story and I will persist in composing, even if the sole items remaining is a damaged writing tool and a scrap of damaged material.

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

An educator, 40, teacher in a refugee camp

I have been educating in this area for over ten years. Originally in that urban area, then in a different town, and presently in the central camp in the central Gaza Strip. In pre-conflict times, I typically educated six classes of about fourty pupils per class, nearly 240 young minds keen on education.

Instructing them was my mission and happiness in life, and I still recollect the gleam in a pupil's gaze when a concept was understood; the type of instance every instructor lives for.

I always believed education should be dynamic. My learning environment was a zone of play, aesthetics, and activity. We painted maps, performed past occurrences, and converted teaching into tales.

Joy always permeated the space as curiosity displaced apprehension. Indeed, even in earlier times, young residents were always scared. My teaching space was a protected zone but after the seventh, everything changed.

My educational institution became a safe haven for households running from the aerial attacks. Shortly after, it was targeted and entirely ruined. There are almost no learning institutions still erect in the region now. For two years, all has been unusual. The war has shattered every facet of our lives: protection, dwellings, schools, hopes. Fear and grief are ever-present realities.

Numerous of my pupils are now lost – minors who talked about dreaming of physicians, painters, and instructors. They were deprived even the entitlement to survival. Those who survive endure malnutrition, displacement and exhaustion – and nevertheless, they still cling to the will to learn.

Sometimes, when the internet enables, I hear from a few of them. They contact questioning: “How are you, teacher?” We communicate short messages, abbreviated teaching, minor flashes of contact amid the turmoil. They ask if things will ever return to usual. I tell them I don’t know.

All over the region, educators, volunteers and organizations try to teach in any feasible location: in temporary structures, destroyed learning spaces, or congested safe zones. Learning has become an act of defiance, a way to declare: “We are still here.” And so long as we keep acquiring knowledge, we will persist.

Numerous of us are also guardians. I am a parent of {three|several