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'Our plea is for action, not compassion'.

Juwayriya Adwan, twelve, a temporary shelter

For the past 24 months since I was last inside a learning environment. Two years since I listened to the school chime at the institution I attended, sat at my desk and raised my hand during my preferred subject. Sometimes I still clearly recall the auditory and olfactory sensations: chalk dust, wooden scraps, laughter echoing down the halls. But my learning place was destroyed; it was bombed soon after the conflict started. My learning materials incinerated, and several classmates lost.

I was in the fifth year on 7 October: the concluding day I went to school. That early hours, air raid sirens sounded through the passageways. Some children cried, others gripped each other. Our educator attempted reassurance, but even her tone wavered. I remember longing for a normal day; teaching, recess, a poem recital. Instead, that day became the last page of my former reality.

Hostilities have claimed innumerable aspects. But the most painful deprivation of all is schooling, because that is the loss of the future itself.

Now I live with my mother and father, two brothers and sister in a packed refuge in al-Mawasi. The tent walls sway with breezes, providing no climate control. We line up for nourishment and hydration. Power is imaginary and privacy doesn’t exist. Optimism seems delicate.

At night, I look up at the night lights through the gaps of my shelter and question if my friends see the comparable vista. Some message me when they can, saying they long for education and have kept their old notebooks; like relics of a vanished time. I feel guilty because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once dreamed of pursuing pedagogy to assist young residents learn, even when life was hard. Now I aim for being a writer – to compose, to talk and to show the world what it represents to be a young person in this region. I want to tell our stories of anxiety and deprivation, but also bravery. Because even in this place, amid fatality and debris, our words continue.

When there’s some internet, I try to study digitally. On other occasions, I go to a modest shelter where aid workers instruct us mathematics and language. The lessons are short – the energy supply stops or the airstrikes begin again but in those moments, I sense being. I recall who I was: the girl who loved numbers and poems, who thought knowledge could alter reality.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our dwellings, learning centers and kin. I mourned my paternal relative, his partner, and their children. I lost my cherished hometown, Rafah, which is merely debris now. But the toughest sacrifice of all is education, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the international community, I express this: don’t let our dreams die. We don’t want pity, we require steps. The youth merit texts, schools and security. Education is not a luxury, it is a essential privilege. The territory is not just ruins; it is youth who still dream amid unmanned aircraft at evening. It is my story and I will continue writing, even if all I have left is a damaged writing tool and a scrap of damaged material.

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

Naglaa Weshah, forty, instructor in al-Bureij camp

I have been teaching in Gaza for over ten years. Originally in that urban area, then in another location, and now in the central camp in the central Gaza Strip. Prior to hostilities, I typically educated several sets of about dozens of learners, hundreds of eager students enthusiastic about knowledge.

Educating them was my vocation and delight in reality, and I still recollect the gleam in a learner's look when a concept was understood; the sort of occasion every teacher cherishes.

I always thought instruction should be full of life. My classroom was a space of play, creativity, and movement. We designed geographical illustrations, dramatized bygone episodes, and converted teaching into tales.

Joy always occupied the area as inquisitiveness substituted apprehension. Indeed, even before the war, local youth were always scared. My learning environment was a protected zone but after the seventh, all was altered.

My learning center became a refuge for relatives fleeing the explosives. Shortly after, it was struck and entirely ruined. There are very few schools left standing in the region now. For 24 months, nothing has been normal. The conflict has destroyed every part of our existence: safety, residences, schools, aspirations. Fear and grief are ever-present realities.

A significant number of my learners are now deceased – minors who talked about dreaming of physicians, painters, and educators. They were refused even the entitlement to survival. Those who remain live with hunger, eviction and fatigue – and however, they still maintain the desire for education.

Occasionally, when the connectivity enables, I get in touch with a handful of them. They message inquiring: “How are you, teacher?” We share short messages, abbreviated teaching, minor flashes of interaction amid the turmoil. They ask if situations will ever return to usual. I tell them I don’t know.

All over Gaza, instructors, volunteers and charities try to teach in any feasible location: in temporary structures, damaged classrooms, or crowded shelters. Education has become an gesture of resistance, a way to express: “Our presence continues.” And provided that we persist in education, we will persist.

Many of us are also caregivers. I am a guardian of {three|several