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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

Juwayriya Adwan, 12, al-Mawasi

For the past 24 months since I entered a learning environment. That long since I listened to the start-of-class signal at my former school, took my seat and raised my hand during my favourite class. At times I still vividly remember the sounds and smells: chalk dust, sharpener leftovers, joyful sounds in corridors. But my school no longer exists; it was targeted soon after the hostilities erupted. My books were burned, and some of my friends killed.

I was in the fifth year on 7 October: the last day I attended classes. That early hours, air raid sirens screamed through the halls. Some students wept, others clasped palms firmly. Our instructor sought to soothe, but even her voice trembled. I remember hoping for a ordinary day; lessons, recess, a poem recital. Instead, that day marked the end of my previous existence.

Conflict has stolen countless things. But the most painful deprivation of all is education, because that is the loss of the future itself.

Now I live with my guardians, male relatives and female sibling in a packed refuge in this coastal area. The tent walls flap in the wind, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We queue for sustenance and drinks. Power is imaginary and personal space is absent. Optimism seems delicate.

At night, I look up at the celestial bodies through the gaps of my shelter and question if my companions see the identical heavens. Some contact me when they are able, saying they yearn for classes and have kept their former exercise books; like relics of a vanished time. I feel guilty because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once aspired to becoming a teacher to assist Gaza’s children study, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I hope for being a journalist – to compose, to communicate and to demonstrate the world what it signifies to be a child in the Strip. I want to share our experiences of anxiety and deprivation, but also bravery. Because even amid these conditions, amid fatality and debris, our voices refuse to be silent.

When connectivity is available, I endeavor to educate myself digitally. Sometimes, I visit a small tent where volunteers educate us math and Arabic. The lessons are short – the energy supply stops or the bombing resumes but in these instances, I feel alive. I remember who I was: the girl who adored mathematics and poetry, who was convinced knowledge could alter reality.

The war has taken so much; our residences, learning centers and relatives. I lost my paternal relative, his wife, and their children. I lost my cherished hometown, that southern city, which is only ruins now. But the toughest sacrifice of all is learning, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

To the world, I state this: don’t let our dreams die. We don’t want pity, we want action. The youth merit texts, schools and protection. Schooling is not an extravagance, it is a essential privilege. This region is not just ruins; it is children who still dream under aerial surveillance at evening. It is my account and I will persist in composing, even if all I have left is a fractured utensil and a fragment of ripped sheet.

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

Naglaa Weshah, 40, instructor in a refugee camp

I have been instructing in the region for a substantial period. First in Khan Younis, then in Deir al-Balah, and now in the central camp in the central Gaza Strip. In pre-conflict times, I regularly instructed multiple groups of about 40 students each, hundreds of eager students enthusiastic about knowledge.

Instructing them was my mission and happiness in existence, and I still recollect the twinkle in a student’s eyes when a knowledge was acquired; the kind of moment every teacher cherishes.

I always thought education should be dynamic. My classroom was a zone of play, art, and movement. We designed geographical illustrations, dramatized bygone episodes, and converted teaching into tales.

Laughter always occupied the area as interest substituted anxiety. Certainly, even prior to conflict, local youth were always frightened. My teaching space was a protected zone but after 7 October, all was altered.

My learning center became a safe haven for households running from the explosives. Shortly after, it was targeted and entirely ruined. There are hardly any learning institutions still erect in the region now. For two years, all has been unusual. The war has destroyed every aspect of our lives: safety, homes, schools, hopes. Fear and grief are ever-present realities.

Many of my students are now dead – minors who spoke of dreaming of physicians, creatives, and educators. They were deprived even the privilege of living. Those who remain endure starvation, relocation and fatigue – and yet, they still cling to the will to learn.

At times, when the connectivity permits, I hear from a small number of them. They contact questioning: “Are you safe, educator?” We exchange short messages, abbreviated teaching, minor flashes of interaction amid the chaos. They inquire if things will ever return to usual. I tell them I don’t know.

Throughout this territory, educators, aid workers and organizations endeavor education in any feasible location: in shelters, ruined educational areas, or crowded shelters. Schooling has become an act of defiance, a way to say: “We persist.” And provided that we keep acquiring knowledge, we will persist.

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