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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

Juwayriya Adwan, twelve, a temporary shelter

It has been 24 months since I was last inside a learning environment. Two years since I listened to the school chime at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, occupied my place and participated actively during my favourite class. Sometimes I still clearly recall the sounds and smells: chalk dust, pencil shavings, joyful sounds in corridors. But my learning place was destroyed; it was bombed soon after the hostilities erupted. My learning materials incinerated, and some of my friends killed.

I was in fifth grade on that fateful day: the concluding day I attended classes. That beginning of the day, air raid sirens screamed through the halls. Some pupils sobbed, others held hands tightly. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even her voice trembled. I remember longing for a ordinary day; instruction, intermission, a poem recital. Instead, that day signaled the conclusion of my former reality.

Conflict has stolen countless things. But the most painful deprivation of all is education, because without it, our prospects disappear.

Now I dwell alongside my mother and father, male relatives and sister in a congested safe space in Khan Younis. The temporary partitions move with air currents, providing no climate control. We line up for sustenance and drinks. Power is imaginary and personal space is absent. Aspiration appears brittle.

At darkness, I look up at the stars through the holes of my shelter and ponder if my friends see the same sky. Some reach out when they manage, saying they yearn for classes and have kept their previous journals; like valuables from a bygone era. I feel remorseful because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once aspired to becoming a teacher to help young residents acquire knowledge, even when life was hard. Now I aim for being a writer – to draft, to speak and to reveal the world what it means to be a child in the Strip. I want to narrate our accounts of apprehension and need, but also courage. Because even here, amid death and ruins, our words continue.

When there’s some internet, I try to study via the web. On other occasions, I go to a modest shelter where volunteers instruct us mathematics and language. The lessons are short – the energy supply stops or the airstrikes begin again but in such times, I feel alive. I remember who I was: the student who cherished arithmetic and verse, who believed knowledge could alter reality.

Hostilities have stolen countless aspects; our dwellings, learning centers and kin. I mourned my uncle, his partner, and their children. I lost my cherished hometown, that southern city, which is merely debris now. But the most painful deprivation of all is schooling, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the international community, I express this: don’t let our dreams die. We seek no sympathy, we want action. Gaza’s children deserve texts, learning environments and security. Schooling is not an extravagance, it is a fundamental entitlement. This region is not merely devastation; it is minors who continue to aspire under aerial surveillance at darkness. It is my account and I will persist in composing, even if all I have left is a damaged writing tool and a scrap of damaged material.

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

An educator, forty, teacher in central Gaza

I have been instructing in this area for more than a decade. First in a southern city, then in another location, and now in the central camp in the heart of the region. Prior to hostilities, I regularly instructed six classes of about fourty pupils per class, almost two hundred forty individuals enthusiastic about knowledge.

Instructing them was my purpose and joy in life, and I still recollect the gleam in a learner's look when a concept was understood; the type of instance every teacher strives for.

I always believed education should be vibrant. My classroom was a area of amusement, aesthetics, and motion. We created cartographic art, dramatized bygone episodes, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Laughter always occupied the area as curiosity substituted anxiety. Certainly, even prior to conflict, young residents were always afraid. My teaching space was a secure location but after the seventh, the situation transformed.

My school became a shelter for relatives running from the explosives. Shortly after, it was targeted and totally demolished. There are almost no learning institutions remaining intact in the region now. For two years, nothing has been normal. The conflict has shattered every aspect of our existence: safety, dwellings, schools, hopes. Anxiety and sorrow are ever-present realities.

A significant number of my learners are now dead – children who mentioned aspiring to be doctors, painters, and educators. They were deprived even the entitlement to survival. Those who are still here endure hunger, displacement and fatigue – and yet, they still cling to the will to learn.

Sometimes, when the connectivity allows, I receive messages from a small number of them. They message inquiring: “How are you, teacher?” We exchange concise phrases, miniature instruction, tiny sparks of connection amid the turmoil. They inquire if circumstances will ever return to usual. I inform them I don’t know.

Throughout this territory, instructors, volunteers and charities try to teach wherever possible: in temporary structures, ruined educational areas, or congested safe zones. Learning has become an demonstration of perseverance, a way to express: “Our presence continues.” And so long as we persist in education, we will remain.

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