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'We seek action, not sympathy'.

A young student, 12, al-Mawasi

For the past two years since I entered a real classroom. Two years since I listened to the morning bell at my former school, took my seat and raised my hand during my favourite class. Sometimes I still vividly remember the familiar scents and noises: chalk dust, pencil shavings, joyful sounds in corridors. But my learning place was destroyed; it was targeted not long after the war began. My learning materials incinerated, and some of my friends killed.

I was in the fifth year on the seventh of October: the final day I entered the school building. That early hours, alert signals blared through the passageways. Some children cried, others clasped palms firmly. Our educator attempted reassurance, but even she sounded shaky. I remember hoping for a normal day; teaching, break time, a literary performance. Instead, that day signaled the conclusion of my old life.

Conflict has stolen countless things. But the most painful deprivation of all is learning, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

Now I live with my mother and father, male relatives and female sibling in a packed refuge in this coastal area. The shelter coverings move with air currents, failing to insulate. We wait in line for water and food. Energy access is fantasy and privacy doesn’t exist. Aspiration appears brittle.

At evening, I gaze toward the stars through the holes of my tent and question if my peers see the identical heavens. Some message me when they are able, stating they long for education and have preserved their old notebooks; like valuables from a bygone era. I feel remorseful because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once aspired to becoming a teacher to support local youth study, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I aim for being a journalist – to write, to talk and to show the world what it means to be a young person in this region. I want to narrate our accounts of apprehension and need, but also fortitude. Because even in this place, amid fatality and debris, our expressions persist.

When connectivity is available, I try to study online. Other times, I attend a tiny space where aid workers instruct us math and Arabic. The lessons are short – the electricity cuts out or the bombing resumes but in these instances, I feel alive. I remember who I was: the young woman who cherished arithmetic and verse, who believed education could transform society.

Hostilities have stolen countless aspects; our homes, learning centers and kin. I lost my paternal relative, his wife, and their offspring. I said goodbye to my cherished hometown, Rafah, which is merely debris now. But the toughest sacrifice of all is schooling, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the global audience, I state this: preserve our aspirations. We don’t want pity, we demand measures. Gaza’s children are entitled to texts, schools and protection. Education is not a luxury, it is a fundamental entitlement. Gaza is not only destruction; it is youth who still dream under aerial surveillance at darkness. It is my narrative and I will persist in composing, even if my only possessions is a fractured utensil and a fragment of ripped sheet.

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

Naglaa Weshah, 40, instructor in a refugee camp

I have been educating in this area for more than a decade. Initially in a southern city, then in Deir al-Balah, and presently in this refugee settlement in the central Gaza Strip. Before the war started, I regularly instructed several sets of about dozens of learners, almost two hundred forty individuals eager to learn.

Teaching them was my vocation and delight in existence, and I still remember the sparkle in a student’s eyes when a knowledge was acquired; the type of instance every instructor cherishes.

I always thought instruction should be vibrant. My teaching space was a area of play, aesthetics, and motion. We painted maps, performed past occurrences, and turned lessons into stories.

Merriment always occupied the area as inquisitiveness replaced anxiety. Indeed, even prior to conflict, children in Gaza were always scared. My teaching space was a protected zone but after the seventh, the situation transformed.

My learning center became a safe haven for households escaping the aerial attacks. Shortly after, it was attacked and entirely ruined. There are very few schools still erect in this area now. For two years, nothing has been normal. The hostilities has broken every part of our reality: safety, dwellings, schools, aspirations. Apprehension and mourning are perpetual experiences.

A significant number of my students are now deceased – minors who spoke of becoming doctors, artists, and educators. They were refused even the right to exist. Those who are still here experience hunger, eviction and exhaustion – and nevertheless, they still maintain the will to learn.

Occasionally, when the internet permits, I get in touch with a handful of them. They message asking: “Are you safe, educator?” We exchange short messages, abbreviated teaching, tiny sparks of contact amid the disorder. They inquire if circumstances will ever go back to normal. I inform them I have no answer.

Across this territory, educators, volunteers and non-profits endeavor education in all available spaces: in tents, destroyed learning spaces, or crowded shelters. Education has become an demonstration of perseverance, a way to express: “Our presence continues.” And so long as we persist in education, we will endure.

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