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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

Juwayriya Adwan, 12, al-Mawasi

It has been 24 months since I entered a learning environment. Two years since I listened to the start-of-class signal at the institution I attended, occupied my place and participated actively during my beloved lesson. Sometimes I still vividly remember the familiar scents and noises: writing residue, pencil shavings, cheerful echoes. But my educational institution is gone; it was targeted shortly after the war began. My books were burned, and several classmates lost.

I was in fifth grade on the seventh of October: the concluding day I attended classes. That beginning of the day, warning alarms blared through the halls. Some students wept, others gripped each other. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even she sounded shaky. I remember hoping for a routine day; teaching, intermission, a verse presentation. Instead, that day became the last page of my previous existence.

Conflict has stolen countless things. But the toughest sacrifice of all is education, because that is the loss of the future itself.

Now I reside with my parents, siblings and female sibling in a crowded shelter in this coastal area. The tent walls move with air currents, providing no climate control. We line up for nourishment and hydration. Energy access is fantasy and personal space is absent. Hope feels fragile.

At darkness, I look up at the stars through the openings of my shelter and wonder if my companions see the identical heavens. Some message me when they can, expressing they yearn for classes and have preserved their previous journals; like treasures from a lost world. I feel remorseful because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once dreamed of pursuing pedagogy to support local youth learn, even when life was hard. Now I aim for being a writer – to draft, to talk and to show the world what it signifies to be a child in the Strip. I want to share our experiences of fear and hunger, but also fortitude. Because even here, amid death and ruins, our expressions persist.

When online access exists, I endeavor to educate myself digitally. Other times, I attend a tiny space where aid workers teach us arithmetic and Arabic. The sessions are brief – the power fails or the airstrikes begin again but in such times, I feel alive. I recall who I was: the young woman who loved numbers and poems, who thought knowledge could alter reality.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our dwellings, learning centers and families. I mourned my family member, his partner, and their children. I said goodbye to my beautiful city, Rafah, which is nothing but rubble now. But the hardest loss of all is education, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the international community, I express this: keep our hopes alive. We don’t want pity, we want action. Gaza’s children are entitled to books, schools and security. Learning is not an extravagance, it is a fundamental entitlement. The territory is not just ruins; it is youth who continue to aspire amid unmanned aircraft at evening. It is my story and I will persist in composing, even if my only possessions is a broken pencil and a piece of torn paper.

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

Naglaa Weshah, 40, instructor in al-Bureij camp

I have been instructing in the region for over ten years. Initially in that urban area, then in a different town, and now in the central camp in the middle of the territory. Prior to hostilities, I used to teach several sets of about 40 students each, almost two hundred forty individuals eager to learn.

Teaching them was my mission and happiness in reality, and I still recollect the gleam in a learner's look when a knowledge was acquired; the kind of moment every teacher cherishes.

I always was convinced education should be dynamic. My classroom was a area of amusement, aesthetics, and motion. We designed geographical illustrations, acted out historical events, and converted teaching into tales.

Merriment always filled the room as curiosity replaced anxiety. Certainly, even prior to conflict, local youth were always frightened. My learning environment was a protected zone but after that day, the situation transformed.

My school became a shelter for families fleeing the explosives. Soon, it was struck and entirely ruined. There are very few learning institutions still erect in this area now. For two years, everything has been abnormal. The war has destroyed every facet of our lives: security, homes, schools, dreams. Anxiety and sorrow are ever-present realities.

Many of my pupils are now lost – children who mentioned dreaming of physicians, artists, and educators. They were deprived even the privilege of living. Those who survive experience hunger, eviction and fatigue – and nevertheless, they still cling to the thirst for knowledge.

Occasionally, when the internet enables, I get in touch with a handful of them. They message asking: “Are you OK, teacher?” We communicate concise phrases, abbreviated teaching, small glimmers of interaction amid the chaos. They question if circumstances will ever return to usual. I inform them I don’t know.

Across this territory, teachers, aid workers and non-profits attempt instruction in all available spaces: in shelters, damaged classrooms, or congested safe zones. Schooling has become an act of defiance, a way to declare: “We are still here.” And so long as we persist in education, we will endure.

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