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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

A young student, twelve, al-Mawasi

For the past two years since I entered a learning environment. Two years since I heard the morning bell at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, took my seat and participated actively during my favourite class. Sometimes I still distinctly recollect the auditory and olfactory sensations: powder from the board, sharpener leftovers, cheerful echoes. But my educational institution is gone; it was targeted soon after the conflict started. My textbooks turned to ash, and several classmates lost.

I was in the fifth year on 7 October: the final day I went to school. That early hours, warning alarms screamed through the corridors. Some students wept, others clasped palms firmly. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even her voice trembled. I remember longing for a routine day; instruction, intermission, a poem recital. Instead, that day became the last page of my previous existence.

The war has taken so much. But the toughest sacrifice of all is schooling, because that is the loss of the future itself.

Now I live with my parents, two brothers and sister in a crowded shelter in al-Mawasi. The shelter coverings sway with breezes, failing to insulate. We line up for sustenance and drinks. Electricity is a dream and personal space is absent. Optimism seems delicate.

At night, I look up at the celestial bodies through the holes of my shelter and wonder if my peers see the identical heavens. Some contact me when they are able, expressing they long for education and have kept their old notebooks; like valuables from a bygone era. I feel ashamed because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once aspired to entering the education field to help young residents learn, even when life was hard. Now I hope for being a journalist – to write, to speak and to demonstrate the world what it means to be a minor in the Strip. I want to narrate our accounts of fear and hunger, but also bravery. Because even in this place, amid fatality and debris, our voices refuse to be silent.

When online access exists, I endeavor to educate myself online. Other times, I attend a modest shelter where aid workers teach us mathematics and language. The sessions are brief – the power fails or the attacks recommence but in those moments, I experience vitality. I remember who I was: the girl who adored mathematics and poetry, who was convinced learning could change the world.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our homes, educational institutions and kin. I grieved for my uncle, his wife, and their children. I said goodbye to my beautiful city, my previous home, which is merely debris now. But the toughest sacrifice of all is education, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the world, I say this: keep our hopes alive. Compassion isn't enough, we demand measures. Young residents deserve texts, educational facilities and safety. Learning is not a luxury, it is a fundamental entitlement. Gaza is not just ruins; it is minors who continue to aspire beneath the drones at evening. It is my narrative and I will keep drafting, even if all I have left is a broken pencil and a piece of torn paper.

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

An educator, forty, instructor in central Gaza

I have been instructing in Gaza for over ten years. Originally in Khan Younis, then in Deir al-Balah, and now in this refugee settlement in the middle of the territory. In pre-conflict times, I regularly instructed multiple groups of about fourty pupils per class, hundreds of eager students enthusiastic about knowledge.

Educating them was my mission and happiness in existence, and I still recall the sparkle in a pupil's gaze when a new idea clicked; the kind of moment every instructor strives for.

I always was convinced learning should be dynamic. My classroom was a area of recreation, creativity, and motion. We painted maps, performed past occurrences, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Merriment always permeated the space as inquisitiveness substituted anxiety. Yes, even in earlier times, local youth were always scared. My learning environment was a protected zone but after the seventh, everything changed.

My school became a shelter for relatives running from the aerial attacks. Soon, it was targeted and entirely ruined. There are very few schools left standing in this area now. For two years, nothing has been normal. The conflict has destroyed every part of our existence: protection, homes, learning places, dreams. Apprehension and mourning are ever-present realities.

A significant number of my students are now deceased – children who mentioned aspiring to be doctors, artists, and instructors. They were deprived even the entitlement to survival. Those who survive experience starvation, relocation and weariness – and yet, they still cling to the thirst for knowledge.

Occasionally, when the online access allows, I get in touch with a small number of them. They message asking: “Are you safe, instructor?” We exchange brief words, abbreviated teaching, minor flashes of contact amid the disorder. They inquire if circumstances will ever go back to normal. I state to them I don’t know.

Throughout the region, educators, helpers and charities try to teach in any feasible location: in tents, ruined educational areas, or packed refuges. Education has become an demonstration of perseverance, a way to say: “Our presence continues.” And provided that we keep acquiring knowledge, we will endure.

A significant number of us are also guardians. I am a mother of {three|several