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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

A young student, 12, a temporary shelter

It has been two years since I was last inside a real classroom. That long since I heard the morning bell at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, sat at my desk and participated actively during my favourite class. Occasionally I still distinctly recollect the familiar scents and noises: writing residue, pencil shavings, cheerful echoes. But my learning place was destroyed; it was bombed soon after the hostilities erupted. My learning materials incinerated, and several classmates lost.

I was in the fifth year on the seventh of October: the final day I attended classes. That beginning of the day, warning alarms sounded through the halls. Some children cried, others held hands tightly. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even she sounded shaky. I remember hoping for a normal day; teaching, break time, a literary performance. Instead, that day became the last page of my previous existence.

Hostilities have claimed innumerable aspects. But the hardest loss of all is learning, because without it, our prospects disappear.

Now I reside with my guardians, siblings and female sibling in a congested safe space in al-Mawasi. The tent walls flap in the wind, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We queue for sustenance and drinks. Electricity is a dream and personal space is absent. Optimism seems delicate.

At night, I look up at the stars through the openings of my tent and ponder if my companions see the identical heavens. Some reach out when they are able, expressing they long for education and have preserved their old notebooks; like relics of a vanished time. I feel remorseful because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once dreamed of becoming a teacher to assist Gaza’s children acquire knowledge, even when existence was challenging. Now I aim for being a journalist – to write, to speak and to demonstrate the world what it signifies to be a minor in this region. I want to narrate our accounts of apprehension and need, but also bravery. Because even in this place, amid loss and destruction, our words continue.

When there’s some internet, I try to study online. On other occasions, I visit a modest shelter where volunteers educate us mathematics and language. The sessions are brief – the electricity cuts out or the attacks recommence but in those moments, I experience vitality. I recollect who I was: the student who adored mathematics and poetry, who was convinced education could transform society.

Hostilities have stolen countless aspects; our homes, learning centers and relatives. I lost my paternal relative, his partner, and their offspring. I lost my beautiful city, my previous home, which is merely debris now. But the hardest loss of all is schooling, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the world, I express this: keep our hopes alive. Compassion isn't enough, we want action. Gaza’s children merit texts, learning environments and safety. Schooling is not optional, it is a basic right. Gaza is not merely devastation; it is minors who continue to aspire beneath the drones at darkness. It is my story and I will continue writing, even if all I have left is a fractured utensil and a scrap of damaged material.

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

Naglaa Weshah, 40, teacher in central Gaza

I have been educating in this area for over ten years. Initially in that urban area, then in another location, and presently in the central camp in the middle of the territory. In pre-conflict times, I used to teach multiple groups of about 40 students each, hundreds of eager students eager to learn.

Teaching them was my mission and happiness in life, and I still remember the sparkle in a pupil's gaze when a knowledge was acquired; the type of instance every educator lives for.

I always was convinced education should be dynamic. My classroom was a area of amusement, aesthetics, and movement. We painted maps, acted out historical events, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Laughter always filled the room as inquisitiveness replaced fear. Indeed, even in earlier times, children in Gaza were always afraid. My learning environment was a protected zone but after that day, all was altered.

My learning center became a shelter for families fleeing the bombs. Soon, it was attacked and totally demolished. There are hardly any learning institutions left standing in this area now. For this period, nothing has been normal. The hostilities has shattered every part of our existence: security, dwellings, schools, aspirations. Apprehension and mourning are ever-present realities.

A significant number of my pupils are now lost – youth who spoke of dreaming of physicians, painters, and teachers. They were denied even the entitlement to survival. Those who are still here experience hunger, eviction and fatigue – and nevertheless, they still maintain the thirst for knowledge.

Occasionally, when the internet enables, I hear from a few of them. They contact asking: “Are you OK, educator?” We share short messages, abbreviated teaching, minor flashes of connection amid the disorder. They ask if situations will ever return to usual. I tell them I am uncertain.

Across this territory, educators, helpers and organizations try to teach in any feasible location: in tents, destroyed learning spaces, or packed refuges. Learning has become an gesture of resistance, a way to say: “We persist.” And as long as we keep acquiring knowledge, we will endure.

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