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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

Juwayriya Adwan, 12, a temporary shelter

It has been 24 months since I entered a proper school. Two years since I heard the start-of-class signal at the institution I attended, sat at my desk and answered questions during my favourite class. Sometimes I still distinctly recollect the sounds and smells: chalk dust, sharpener leftovers, joyful sounds in corridors. But my learning place was destroyed; it was targeted soon after the hostilities erupted. My books were burned, and several classmates lost.

I was in the fifth year on that fateful day: the final day I entered the school building. That beginning of the day, air raid sirens screamed through the passageways. Some students wept, others held hands tightly. Our educator attempted reassurance, but even she sounded shaky. I remember wishing for a normal day; lessons, recess, a literary performance. Instead, that day became the last page of my former reality.

Hostilities have claimed innumerable aspects. But the hardest loss of all is learning, because that is the loss of the future itself.

Now I dwell alongside my guardians, siblings and female sibling in a congested safe space in Khan Younis. The tent walls flap in the wind, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We queue for nourishment and hydration. Energy access is fantasy and privacy doesn’t exist. Optimism seems delicate.

At evening, I gaze toward the night lights through the gaps of my temporary home and wonder if my friends see the comparable vista. Some reach out when they can, expressing they long for education and have kept their previous journals; like treasures from a lost world. I feel guilty because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once envisioned becoming a teacher to help local youth study, even when life was hard. Now I aim for being a journalist – to draft, to communicate and to demonstrate the world what it means to be a young person in the Strip. I want to tell our stories of apprehension and need, but also bravery. Because even here, amid fatality and debris, our words continue.

When there’s some internet, I endeavor to educate myself digitally. Other times, I attend a tiny space where aid workers teach us mathematics and language. The lessons are short – the energy supply stops or the attacks recommence but in those moments, I sense being. I recall who I was: the young woman who cherished arithmetic and verse, who thought knowledge could alter reality.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our homes, learning centers and kin. I grieved for my uncle, his wife, and their offspring. I lost my cherished hometown, that southern city, which is nothing but rubble now. But the toughest sacrifice of all is education, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

To the international community, I express this: preserve our aspirations. We don’t want pity, we demand measures. Gaza’s children are entitled to literature, learning environments and protection. Learning is not a luxury, it is a essential privilege. This region is not just ruins; it is children who persist in hoping beneath the drones at darkness. It is my account and I will persist in composing, even if the sole items remaining is a broken pencil and a piece of torn paper.

'Pupils inquire: "Are you alright, educator?"'.

Naglaa Weshah, 40, instructor in a refugee camp

I have been teaching in Gaza for over ten years. Originally in a southern city, then in a different town, and currently in al-Bureij camp in the middle of the territory. Before the war started, I used to teach six classes of about dozens of learners, almost two hundred forty individuals eager to learn.

Instructing them was my mission and happiness in existence, and I still recollect the gleam in a student’s eyes when a new idea clicked; the sort of occasion every instructor lives for.

I always was convinced learning should be vibrant. My classroom was a area of amusement, art, and movement. We painted maps, performed past occurrences, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Joy always occupied the area as interest displaced apprehension. Certainly, even in earlier times, young residents were always afraid. My learning environment was a secure location but after that day, all was altered.

My educational institution became a shelter for households escaping the explosives. Soon, it was attacked and entirely ruined. There are almost no schools remaining intact in this area now. For 24 months, nothing has been normal. The war has shattered every part of our lives: safety, dwellings, educational centers, aspirations. Fear and grief are constant companions.

A significant number of my students are now deceased – children who mentioned dreaming of physicians, creatives, and teachers. They were denied even the right to exist. Those who remain endure starvation, relocation and weariness – and yet, they still maintain the thirst for knowledge.

At times, when the online access permits, I get in touch with a small number of them. They write inquiring: “How are you, educator?” We share concise phrases, abbreviated teaching, tiny sparks of interaction amid the turmoil. They question if circumstances will ever revert to standard. I state to them I don’t know.

Across the region, teachers, volunteers and non-profits try to teach wherever possible: in tents, destroyed learning spaces, or congested safe zones. Education has become an demonstration of perseverance, a way to declare: “We are still here.” And so long as we continue learning, we will remain.

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