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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

A young student, 12, al-Mawasi

For the past 24 months since I entered a proper school. That long since I listened to the school chime at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, sat at my desk and answered questions during my favourite class. At times I still distinctly recollect the sounds and smells: writing residue, sharpener leftovers, joyful sounds in corridors. But my school no longer exists; it was targeted soon after the conflict started. My learning materials incinerated, and some of my friends killed.

I was in the fifth year on the seventh of October: the concluding day I attended classes. That morning, air raid sirens sounded through the halls. Some pupils sobbed, others gripped each other. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even she sounded shaky. I remember wishing for a ordinary day; teaching, recess, a verse presentation. Instead, that day signaled the conclusion of my old life.

The war has taken so much. But the toughest sacrifice of all is schooling, because without it, our prospects disappear.

Now I reside with my mother and father, male relatives and female sibling in a crowded shelter in Khan Younis. The tent walls sway with breezes, failing to insulate. We queue for sustenance and drinks. Electricity is a dream and personal space is absent. Aspiration appears brittle.

At evening, I gaze toward the stars through the holes of my temporary home and question if my friends see the identical heavens. Some reach out when they manage, saying they miss school and have retained their previous journals; like relics of a vanished time. I feel remorseful because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once aspired to pursuing pedagogy to assist Gaza’s children study, even when life was hard. Now I aim for being a journalist – to compose, to talk and to reveal the world what it means to be a child in Gaza. I want to tell our stories of anxiety and deprivation, but also bravery. Because even here, amid loss and destruction, our words continue.

When there’s some internet, I attempt learning online. On other occasions, I attend a small tent where aid workers teach us arithmetic and Arabic. The lessons are short – the electricity cuts out or the bombing resumes but in such times, I feel alive. I recollect who I was: the young woman who loved numbers and poems, who was convinced knowledge could alter reality.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our dwellings, schools and kin. I grieved for my family member, his wife, and their children. I lost my beloved urban area, Rafah, which is only ruins now. But the most painful deprivation of all is education, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the global audience, I say this: don’t let our dreams die. We seek no sympathy, we want action. Gaza’s children are entitled to literature, learning environments and security. Schooling is not optional, it is a basic right. This region is not just ruins; it is minors who continue to aspire under aerial surveillance at evening. It is my story and I will keep drafting, even if my only possessions is a fractured utensil and a piece of torn paper.

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

Naglaa Weshah, forty, instructor in al-Bureij camp

I have been instructing in the region for over ten years. First in a southern city, then in Deir al-Balah, and currently in the central camp in the heart of the region. Prior to hostilities, I used to teach multiple groups of about dozens of learners, nearly 240 young minds keen on education.

Teaching them was my vocation and delight in existence, and I still recall the twinkle in a pupil's gaze when a concept was understood; the sort of occasion every educator cherishes.

I always believed instruction should be vibrant. My learning environment was a area of amusement, creativity, and movement. We designed geographical illustrations, performed past occurrences, and converted teaching into tales.

Laughter always permeated the space as curiosity replaced anxiety. Indeed, even prior to conflict, local youth were always afraid. My learning environment was a secure location but after 7 October, the situation transformed.

My educational institution became a shelter for families running from the aerial attacks. Not long later, it was targeted and totally demolished. There are very few educational facilities still erect in Gaza now. For this period, everything has been abnormal. The conflict has broken every part of our lives: safety, homes, learning places, hopes. Anxiety and sorrow are ever-present realities.

Many of my pupils are now dead – children who spoke of dreaming of physicians, painters, and educators. They were refused even the entitlement to survival. Those who survive endure malnutrition, displacement and fatigue – and however, they still hold onto the will to learn.

At times, when the online access permits, I hear from a small number of them. They write inquiring: “Are you safe, educator?” We communicate short messages, abbreviated teaching, minor flashes of interaction amid the disorder. They inquire if circumstances will ever return to usual. I tell them I have no answer.

Across Gaza, educators, helpers and organizations attempt instruction in all available spaces: in temporary structures, destroyed learning spaces, or congested safe zones. Learning has become an gesture of resistance, a way to say: “We persist.” And provided that we keep acquiring knowledge, we will persist.

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