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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

A young student, 12, Khan Younis

It has been two years since I was last inside a learning environment. Two years since I listened to the morning bell at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, occupied my place and participated actively during my preferred subject. Sometimes I still vividly remember the sounds and smells: powder from the board, wooden scraps, joyful sounds in corridors. But my school no longer exists; it was struck shortly after the war began. My textbooks turned to ash, and several classmates lost.

I was in the fifth year on that fateful day: the last day I attended classes. That beginning of the day, warning alarms sounded through the corridors. Some students wept, others clasped palms firmly. Our educator attempted reassurance, but even her voice trembled. I remember wishing for a routine day; teaching, intermission, a poem recital. Instead, that day signaled the conclusion of my former reality.

Hostilities have claimed innumerable aspects. But the hardest loss of all is schooling, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

Now I reside with my parents, male relatives and female sibling in a packed refuge in al-Mawasi. The temporary partitions flap in the wind, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We wait in line for sustenance and drinks. Power is imaginary and privacy doesn’t exist. Aspiration appears brittle.

At night, I observe the night lights through the openings of my temporary home and ponder if my companions see the comparable vista. Some reach out when they manage, stating they long for education and have kept their former exercise books; like relics of a vanished time. I feel guilty because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once dreamed of entering the education field to help local youth acquire knowledge, even when existence was challenging. Now I hope for being a reporter – to draft, to talk and to reveal the world what it means to be a young person in this region. I want to narrate our accounts of fear and hunger, but also fortitude. Because even here, amid fatality and debris, our words continue.

When connectivity is available, I attempt learning digitally. Sometimes, I go to a modest shelter where volunteers teach us mathematics and language. The lessons are short – the electricity cuts out or the airstrikes begin again but in such times, I sense being. I remember who I was: the young woman who loved numbers and poems, who believed education could transform society.

The war has taken so much; our residences, schools and relatives. I lost my family member, his spouse, and their young ones. I forfeited my beautiful city, my previous home, which is nothing but rubble now. But the most painful deprivation of all is education, because without it, our prospects disappear.

To the world, I express this: preserve our aspirations. We seek no sympathy, we demand measures. The youth deserve literature, schools and safety. Schooling is not a luxury, it is a basic right. Gaza is not merely devastation; it is children who persist in hoping under aerial surveillance at evening. It is my story and I will continue writing, even if the sole items remaining is a fractured utensil and a fragment of ripped sheet.

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

An educator, forty, teacher in al-Bureij camp

I have been instructing in this area for over ten years. Initially in Khan Younis, then in a different town, and presently in al-Bureij camp in the middle of the territory. Prior to hostilities, I typically educated six classes of about fourty pupils per class, almost two hundred forty individuals keen on education.

Educating them was my mission and happiness in existence, and I still recall the gleam in a student’s eyes when a new idea clicked; the kind of moment every instructor cherishes.

I always thought instruction should be dynamic. My teaching space was a area of amusement, art, and movement. We created cartographic art, performed past occurrences, and turned lessons into stories.

Merriment always permeated the space as curiosity displaced anxiety. Yes, even prior to conflict, young residents were always afraid. My teaching space was a protected zone but after that day, all was altered.

My educational institution became a shelter for households fleeing the explosives. Soon, it was struck and entirely ruined. There are hardly any schools still erect in Gaza now. For 24 months, all has been unusual. The hostilities has destroyed every aspect of our reality: protection, dwellings, schools, aspirations. Anxiety and sorrow are perpetual experiences.

Many of my learners are now dead – youth who spoke of becoming medical professionals, artists, and teachers. They were denied even the right to exist. Those who are still here live with hunger, eviction and fatigue – and yet, they still cling to the will to learn.

At times, when the online access allows, I receive messages from a few of them. They write questioning: “Are you OK, instructor?” We communicate concise phrases, miniature instruction, tiny sparks of connection amid the chaos. They question if situations will ever return to usual. I inform them I don’t know.

Across the region, educators, helpers and non-profits endeavor education in any feasible location: in shelters, ruined educational areas, or congested safe zones. Learning has become an demonstration of perseverance, a way to say: “We persist.” And as long as we keep acquiring knowledge, we will remain.

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