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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

Juwayriya Adwan, 12, a temporary shelter

For the past two years since I stepped into a real classroom. Two years since I heard the start-of-class signal at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, sat at my desk and participated actively during my preferred subject. Sometimes I still vividly remember the auditory and olfactory sensations: chalk dust, pencil shavings, laughter echoing down the halls. But my educational institution is gone; it was targeted shortly after the war began. My textbooks turned to ash, and companions perished.

I was in fifth grade on the seventh of October: the last day I entered the school building. That early hours, air raid sirens blared through the passageways. Some pupils sobbed, others held hands tightly. Our educator attempted reassurance, but even her voice trembled. I remember hoping for a normal day; lessons, recess, a verse presentation. Instead, that day became the last page of my previous existence.

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

Now I dwell alongside my mother and father, male relatives and female sibling in a crowded shelter in al-Mawasi. The temporary partitions sway with breezes, providing no climate control. We line up for sustenance and drinks. Energy access is fantasy and privacy doesn’t exist. Aspiration appears brittle.

At evening, I look up at the night lights through the holes of my temporary home and wonder if my peers see the same sky. Some message me when they are able, expressing they long for education and have retained their former exercise books; like treasures from a lost world. I feel remorseful because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once aspired to entering the education field to support Gaza’s children learn, even when life was hard. Now I aim for being a writer – to draft, to communicate and to show the world what it signifies to be a minor in the Strip. I want to share our experiences of fear and hunger, but also fortitude. Because even amid these conditions, amid death and ruins, our expressions persist.

When connectivity is available, I attempt learning digitally. On other occasions, I attend a small tent where volunteers instruct us math and Arabic. The instruction is limited – the electricity cuts out or the airstrikes begin again but in those moments, I sense being. I recollect who I was: the young woman who loved numbers and poems, who thought knowledge could alter reality.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our homes, educational institutions and relatives. I lost my paternal relative, his wife, and their offspring. I lost my cherished hometown, that southern city, which is only ruins now. But the most painful deprivation 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 want action. Gaza’s children deserve texts, learning environments and protection. Schooling is not an extravagance, it is a essential privilege. This region is not only destruction; it is children who continue to aspire under aerial surveillance at evening. It is my story 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?"'.

Naglaa Weshah, forty, instructor in al-Bureij camp

I have been instructing in the region for a substantial period. Initially in a southern city, then in Deir al-Balah, and now in this refugee settlement in the middle of the territory. Before the war started, I used to teach six classes of about fourty pupils per class, nearly 240 young minds keen on education.

Educating them was my purpose and joy in existence, and I still recall the gleam in a pupil's gaze when a knowledge was acquired; the kind of moment every educator lives for.

I always thought instruction should be vibrant. My teaching space was a space of play, aesthetics, and activity. We painted maps, acted out historical events, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Joy always permeated the space as interest displaced anxiety. Indeed, even in earlier times, young residents were always frightened. My classroom was a protected zone but after the seventh, all was altered.

My learning center became a safe haven for households escaping the bombs. Not long later, it was targeted and entirely ruined. There are very few educational facilities still erect in this area now. For 24 months, everything has been abnormal. The hostilities has shattered every facet of our reality: security, residences, educational centers, dreams. Fear and grief are ever-present realities.

Numerous of my students are now deceased – minors who talked about aspiring to be physicians, painters, and educators. They were deprived even the right to exist. Those who survive live with starvation, eviction and weariness – and yet, they still hold onto the thirst for knowledge.

Occasionally, when the online access permits, I receive messages from a few of them. They write inquiring: “Are you safe, teacher?” We communicate concise phrases, miniature instruction, minor flashes of contact amid the turmoil. They inquire if things will ever return to usual. I tell them I don’t know.

All over this territory, teachers, aid workers and organizations try to teach wherever possible: in tents, destroyed learning spaces, or packed refuges. Learning has become an demonstration of perseverance, a way to express: “We are still here.” And so long as we continue learning, we will persist.

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