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'We seek action, not sympathy'.

A young student, twelve, al-Mawasi

It has been two years since I entered a real classroom. Two years since I listened to the morning bell at the institution I attended, took my seat and answered questions during my favourite class. At times I still distinctly recollect the familiar scents and noises: writing residue, pencil shavings, laughter echoing down the halls. But my learning place was destroyed; it was bombed not long after the hostilities erupted. My learning materials incinerated, and companions perished.

I was in fifth grade on that fateful day: the concluding day I attended classes. That beginning of the day, air raid sirens blared through the halls. Some children cried, others clasped palms firmly. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even she sounded shaky. I remember hoping for a ordinary day; instruction, recess, a verse presentation. Instead, that day marked the end of my previous existence.

Conflict has stolen countless things. But the hardest loss of all is schooling, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

Now I reside with my mother and father, male relatives and sister in a crowded shelter in this coastal area. The temporary partitions sway with breezes, providing no climate control. We queue for sustenance and drinks. Power is imaginary and personal space is absent. Aspiration appears brittle.

At darkness, I gaze toward the celestial bodies through the holes of my tent and wonder 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 valuables from a bygone era. I feel guilty because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once envisioned pursuing pedagogy to help young residents acquire knowledge, even when life was hard. Now I aim for being a reporter – to draft, to speak and to reveal the world what it represents to be a minor in this region. I want to share our experiences of anxiety and deprivation, but also fortitude. Because even amid these conditions, amid death and ruins, our voices refuse to be silent.

When online access exists, I endeavor to educate myself digitally. Other times, I visit a tiny space where helpers instruct us mathematics and language. The instruction is limited – the energy supply stops or the bombing resumes 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.

The war has taken so much; our dwellings, schools and kin. I grieved for my family member, his wife, and their young ones. I lost my cherished hometown, that southern city, which is merely debris now. But the toughest sacrifice of all is education, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the global audience, I say this: preserve our aspirations. Compassion isn't enough, we require steps. Gaza’s children merit texts, learning environments and security. Learning is not an extravagance, it is a essential privilege. This region is not only destruction; it is minors who persist in hoping under aerial surveillance at evening. It is my story and I will keep drafting, even if my only possessions is a broken pencil and a fragment of ripped sheet.

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

An educator, 40, instructor in central Gaza

I have been educating in the region for more than a decade. First in Khan Younis, then in a different town, and now in the central camp in the central Gaza Strip. In pre-conflict times, I used to teach six classes of about fourty pupils per class, almost two hundred forty individuals enthusiastic about knowledge.

Instructing them was my purpose and joy in existence, and I still recollect the sparkle in a student’s eyes when a new idea clicked; the kind of moment every teacher strives for.

I always was convinced instruction should be full of life. My teaching space was a space of recreation, creativity, and activity. We painted maps, acted out historical events, and converted teaching into tales.

Joy always permeated the space as inquisitiveness substituted anxiety. Certainly, even before the war, young residents were always scared. My classroom was a protected zone but after that day, all was altered.

My educational institution became a shelter for families escaping the explosives. Shortly after, it was attacked and entirely ruined. There are hardly any educational facilities still erect in Gaza now. For this period, nothing has been normal. The war has broken every facet of our reality: protection, dwellings, schools, aspirations. Anxiety and sorrow are perpetual experiences.

Numerous of my pupils are now dead – youth who mentioned becoming doctors, creatives, and teachers. They were deprived even the entitlement to survival. Those who survive live with starvation, eviction and exhaustion – and nevertheless, they still hold onto the thirst for knowledge.

Occasionally, when the connectivity enables, I hear from a few of them. They write asking: “How are you, teacher?” We communicate concise phrases, short lessons, minor flashes of connection amid the chaos. They ask if things will ever return to usual. I state to them I have no answer.

All over Gaza, teachers, aid workers and charities endeavor education wherever possible: in shelters, damaged classrooms, or packed refuges. Education has become an demonstration of perseverance, a way to say: “We persist.” And provided that we keep acquiring knowledge, we will endure.

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