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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

A young student, 12, al-Mawasi

It has been two years since I entered a learning environment. That long since I listened to the start-of-class signal at the institution I attended, occupied my place and answered questions during my favourite class. Occasionally I still vividly remember the auditory and olfactory sensations: powder from the board, pencil shavings, cheerful echoes. But my educational institution is gone; it was bombed not long after the hostilities erupted. My books were burned, and several classmates lost.

I was in fifth grade on 7 October: the final day I attended classes. That morning, warning alarms sounded through the corridors. Some students wept, others gripped each other. Our educator attempted reassurance, but even her voice trembled. I remember wishing for a ordinary day; teaching, recess, a verse presentation. Instead, that day became the last page of my former reality.

Hostilities have claimed innumerable aspects. But the toughest sacrifice of all is learning, because without it, our prospects disappear.

Now I live with my guardians, siblings and sister in a congested safe space in this coastal area. The temporary partitions flap in the wind, failing to insulate. We line up for water and food. Power is imaginary and privacy doesn’t exist. Hope feels fragile.

At evening, I look up at the night lights through the openings of my tent and question if my companions see the comparable vista. Some message me when they can, expressing they long for education and have kept their former exercise books; like relics of a vanished time. I feel ashamed because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once envisioned pursuing pedagogy to assist local youth learn, even when life was hard. Now I hope for being a writer – to write, to talk and to reveal the world what it represents to be a young person in this region. I want to narrate our accounts of fear and hunger, but also fortitude. Because even here, amid death and ruins, our expressions persist.

When there’s some internet, I attempt learning via the web. On other occasions, I visit a tiny space where aid workers instruct us arithmetic and Arabic. The lessons are short – the power fails or the attacks recommence but in such times, I experience vitality. I recall who I was: the girl who adored mathematics and poetry, who was convinced learning could change the world.

Hostilities have stolen countless aspects; our dwellings, schools and families. I lost my family member, his wife, and their offspring. I said goodbye to my beautiful city, my previous home, which is merely debris now. But the most painful deprivation of all is learning, because without it, our prospects disappear.

To the global audience, I express this: preserve our aspirations. We seek no sympathy, we want action. Young residents merit literature, educational facilities and security. Education is not optional, it is a fundamental entitlement. Gaza is not merely devastation; it is youth who continue to aspire beneath the drones at darkness. It is my narrative and I will keep drafting, even if the sole items remaining is a broken pencil and a piece of torn paper.

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

An educator, forty, instructor in central Gaza

I have been teaching in the region for over ten years. Originally in Khan Younis, then in a different town, and currently in this refugee settlement in the heart of the region. Before the war started, I regularly instructed multiple groups of about dozens of learners, hundreds of eager students keen on education.

Instructing them was my mission and happiness in reality, and I still recollect the twinkle in a student’s eyes when a concept was understood; the sort of occasion every instructor cherishes.

I always was convinced learning should be vibrant. My classroom was a area of amusement, art, and motion. We painted maps, dramatized bygone episodes, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Laughter always filled the room as inquisitiveness replaced anxiety. Indeed, even in earlier times, local youth were always scared. My learning environment was a place of safety but after that day, all was altered.

My school became a shelter for relatives escaping the aerial attacks. Not long later, it was struck and entirely ruined. There are hardly any schools left standing in Gaza now. For this period, nothing has been normal. The war has shattered every aspect of our existence: security, residences, educational centers, dreams. Fear and grief are perpetual experiences.

Many of my pupils are now lost – children who spoke of aspiring to be physicians, creatives, and educators. They were deprived even the right to exist. Those who remain experience malnutrition, displacement and exhaustion – and yet, they still maintain the will to learn.

Occasionally, when the internet allows, I receive messages from a small number of them. They contact questioning: “How are you, teacher?” We share concise phrases, miniature instruction, small glimmers of interaction amid the chaos. They question if things will ever return to usual. I inform them I am uncertain.

Throughout Gaza, educators, helpers and organizations endeavor education wherever possible: in tents, destroyed learning spaces, or congested safe zones. Schooling has become an demonstration of perseverance, a way to declare: “We persist.” And as long as we persist in education, we will persist.

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