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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

A young student, twelve, a temporary shelter

It has been 24 months since I entered a proper school. Two years since I listened to the morning bell at my former school, took my seat and raised my hand during my preferred subject. Occasionally I still vividly remember the familiar scents and noises: writing residue, sharpener leftovers, joyful sounds in corridors. But my learning place was destroyed; it was targeted not long after the conflict started. My textbooks turned to ash, and companions perished.

I was in the fifth year on that fateful day: the last day I entered the school building. That early hours, warning alarms blared through the corridors. Some students wept, others clasped palms firmly. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even she sounded shaky. I remember hoping for a ordinary day; lessons, break time, a verse presentation. Instead, that day marked the end of my former reality.

The war has taken so much. But the toughest sacrifice of all is schooling, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

Now I live with my parents, siblings and female sibling in a crowded shelter in this coastal area. The tent walls flap in the wind, providing no climate control. We queue for water and food. Power is imaginary and personal space is absent. Hope feels fragile.

At night, I observe the night lights through the holes of my shelter and question if my companions see the same sky. Some contact me when they can, saying they long for education and have kept their old notebooks; like treasures from a lost world. I feel remorseful because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once aspired to pursuing pedagogy to help young residents study, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I dream of being a writer – to compose, to speak and to reveal the world what it represents to be a child in the Strip. I want to narrate our accounts of anxiety and deprivation, but also bravery. Because even here, amid fatality and debris, our voices refuse to be silent.

When there’s some internet, I endeavor to educate myself digitally. On other occasions, I visit a small tent where helpers educate us arithmetic and Arabic. The sessions are brief – the power fails or the bombing resumes but in such times, I experience vitality. I recollect who I was: the student who cherished arithmetic and verse, who thought learning could change the world.

The war has taken so much; our residences, schools and kin. I grieved for my family member, his spouse, and their young ones. I lost my beautiful city, my previous home, which is only ruins now. But the toughest sacrifice of all is schooling, because without it, our prospects disappear.

To the world, I express this: don’t let our dreams die. We seek no sympathy, we demand measures. The youth merit literature, learning environments and safety. Education is not an extravagance, it is a basic right. This region is not merely devastation; it is youth who persist in hoping amid unmanned aircraft at darkness. It is my narrative and I will keep drafting, even if all I have left is a broken pencil and a scrap of damaged material.

'They message: "are you OK, teacher?"'.

Naglaa Weshah, forty, teacher in al-Bureij camp

I have been instructing in Gaza for a substantial period. First in a southern city, then in another location, and now in al-Bureij camp in the central Gaza Strip. Before the war started, I typically educated several sets of about dozens of learners, hundreds of eager students eager to learn.

Teaching them was my purpose and joy in life, and I still recollect the gleam in a student’s eyes when a knowledge was acquired; the sort of occasion every educator strives for.

I always believed learning should be vibrant. My classroom was a zone of play, creativity, and movement. We painted maps, acted out historical events, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Joy always filled the room as interest replaced anxiety. Indeed, even prior to conflict, children in Gaza were always frightened. My learning environment was a place of safety but after the seventh, everything changed.

My school became a safe haven for households running from the explosives. Not long later, it was targeted and totally demolished. There are almost no schools left standing in the region now. For this period, everything has been abnormal. The conflict has destroyed every part of our reality: protection, dwellings, educational centers, hopes. Fear and grief are ever-present realities.

A significant number of my students are now lost – minors who mentioned aspiring to be physicians, artists, and teachers. They were denied 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 internet permits, I hear from a few of them. They write asking: “Are you safe, instructor?” We exchange brief words, short lessons, tiny sparks of interaction amid the turmoil. They ask if circumstances will ever revert to standard. I inform them I am uncertain.

All over this territory, educators, aid workers and organizations endeavor education in any feasible location: in shelters, damaged classrooms, or packed refuges. Learning has become an gesture of resistance, a way to express: “Our presence continues.” And provided that we keep acquiring knowledge, we will remain.

A significant number of us are also guardians. I am a parent of {three|several