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'Our plea is for action, not compassion'.

Juwayriya Adwan, 12, a temporary shelter

For the past 24 months since I entered a proper school. That long since I listened to the school chime at the institution I attended, occupied my place and participated actively during my preferred subject. Sometimes I still clearly recall the sounds and smells: powder from the board, wooden scraps, laughter echoing down the halls. But my educational institution is gone; it was bombed shortly after the conflict started. My textbooks turned to ash, and companions perished.

I was in fifth grade on the seventh of October: the last day I entered the school building. That morning, air raid sirens screamed through the passageways. Some children cried, others held hands tightly. Our instructor sought to soothe, but even she sounded shaky. I remember wishing for a ordinary day; instruction, recess, a poem recital. Instead, that day became the last page of my former reality.

The war has taken so much. But the hardest loss of all is education, because without it, our prospects disappear.

Now I reside with my guardians, male relatives and female sibling in a crowded shelter in Khan Younis. The tent walls flap in the wind, providing no climate control. We line up for nourishment and hydration. Electricity is a dream and seclusion is unavailable. Hope feels fragile.

At evening, I observe the celestial bodies through the openings of my shelter and question if my peers see the comparable vista. Some reach out when they are able, saying they yearn for classes and have preserved their former exercise books; like treasures from a lost world. I feel guilty because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once aspired to becoming a teacher to help Gaza’s children acquire knowledge, even when life was hard. Now I dream of being a writer – to draft, to speak and to reveal the world what it means to be a young person in this region. I want to share our experiences of fear and hunger, but also fortitude. Because even in this place, amid loss and destruction, our words continue.

When there’s some internet, I endeavor to educate myself online. Other times, I go to a small tent where volunteers teach us arithmetic and Arabic. The lessons are short – the energy supply stops or the bombing resumes but in such times, I sense being. I recall who I was: the student who adored mathematics and poetry, who believed knowledge could alter reality.

Hostilities have stolen countless aspects; our homes, schools and families. I mourned my paternal relative, his partner, and their young ones. I lost my beautiful city, that southern city, which is nothing but rubble now. But the toughest sacrifice of all is learning, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the international community, I say this: preserve our aspirations. We seek no sympathy, we require steps. The youth are entitled to texts, schools and security. Schooling is not a luxury, it is a basic right. This region is not only destruction; it is minors who persist in hoping beneath the drones at darkness. It is my narrative and I will keep drafting, even if the sole items remaining is a damaged writing tool and a piece of torn paper.

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

An educator, 40, instructor in central Gaza

I have been instructing in this area for over ten years. First in that urban area, then in Deir al-Balah, and now in al-Bureij camp in the central Gaza Strip. In pre-conflict times, I typically educated several sets of about dozens of learners, almost two hundred forty individuals keen on education.

Instructing them was my mission and happiness in life, and I still recollect the sparkle in a student’s eyes when a new idea clicked; the kind of moment every instructor strives for.

I always was convinced education should be dynamic. My classroom was a zone of amusement, aesthetics, and movement. We created cartographic art, acted out historical events, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Merriment always filled the room as interest replaced apprehension. Certainly, even in earlier times, children in Gaza were always afraid. My teaching space was a protected zone but after the seventh, everything changed.

My learning center became a refuge for relatives running from the explosives. Soon, it was struck and totally demolished. There are almost no educational facilities still erect in the region now. For 24 months, everything has been abnormal. The war has destroyed every facet of our existence: safety, homes, learning places, dreams. Apprehension and mourning are perpetual experiences.

Numerous of my pupils are now dead – youth who spoke of becoming doctors, artists, and educators. They were deprived even the entitlement to survival. Those who survive experience hunger, displacement and exhaustion – and yet, they still cling to the will to learn.

At times, when the internet allows, I receive messages from a small number of them. They write questioning: “How are you, teacher?” We share short messages, abbreviated teaching, small glimmers of interaction amid the chaos. They inquire if things will ever revert to standard. I inform them I don’t know.

All over Gaza, educators, aid workers and organizations attempt instruction in any feasible location: in temporary structures, destroyed learning spaces, or packed refuges. Schooling has become an act of defiance, a way to declare: “We persist.” And as long as we continue learning, we will endure.

Many of us are also parents. I am a guardian of {three|several