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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

A young student, twelve, al-Mawasi

It has been 24 months since I was last inside a learning environment. Two years since I listened to the school chime at my former school, took my seat and raised my hand during my beloved lesson. At times I still clearly recall the auditory and olfactory sensations: powder from the board, sharpener leftovers, joyful sounds in corridors. But my school no longer exists; it was struck soon after the conflict started. My books were burned, and several classmates lost.

I was in fifth grade on 7 October: the last day I entered the school building. That morning, warning alarms sounded through the halls. Some students wept, others held hands tightly. Our instructor sought to soothe, but even her voice trembled. 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 schooling, because that is the loss of the future itself.

Now I dwell alongside my guardians, two brothers and sister in a congested safe space in this coastal area. The shelter coverings move with air currents, providing no climate control. We queue for sustenance and drinks. Electricity is a dream and privacy doesn’t exist. Hope feels fragile.

At darkness, I look up at the stars through the openings of my tent and wonder if my peers see the same sky. Some reach out when they are able, stating they yearn for classes and have retained their old notebooks; like treasures from a lost world. I feel remorseful because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once aspired to entering the education field to assist young residents study, even when life was hard. Now I hope for being a journalist – to draft, to talk and to show the world what it signifies to be a minor in Gaza. I want to narrate our accounts of anxiety and deprivation, but also fortitude. Because even amid these conditions, amid fatality and debris, our words continue.

When there’s some internet, I endeavor to educate myself digitally. On other occasions, I go to a modest shelter where aid workers instruct us arithmetic and Arabic. The sessions are brief – the power fails or the attacks recommence but in those moments, I experience vitality. I recollect who I was: the young woman who adored mathematics and poetry, who thought learning could change the world.

Hostilities have stolen countless aspects; our homes, educational institutions and families. I mourned my paternal relative, his partner, and their offspring. I lost my beautiful city, my previous home, which is nothing but rubble now. But the hardest loss of all is education, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

To the international community, I state this: preserve our aspirations. We don’t want pity, we want action. Gaza’s children deserve texts, schools and security. Schooling is not an extravagance, it is a essential privilege. This region is not merely devastation; it is children who continue to aspire under aerial surveillance at evening. It is my account and I will keep drafting, even if all I have left is a broken pencil and a fragment of ripped sheet.

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

An educator, 40, instructor in central Gaza

I have been teaching in Gaza for more than a decade. First in Khan Younis, then in another location, and now in al-Bureij camp in the central Gaza Strip. In pre-conflict times, I regularly instructed six classes of about 40 students each, nearly 240 young minds keen on education.

Instructing them was my mission and happiness in reality, and I still recollect the twinkle in a student’s eyes when a knowledge was acquired; the sort of occasion every educator cherishes.

I always believed education should be vibrant. My classroom was a area of recreation, art, and motion. We designed geographical illustrations, dramatized bygone episodes, and turned lessons into stories.

Laughter always occupied the area as curiosity substituted anxiety. Yes, even in earlier times, children in Gaza were always afraid. My teaching space was a secure location but after the seventh, the situation transformed.

My school became a shelter for relatives fleeing the explosives. Shortly after, it was attacked and totally demolished. There are hardly any schools still erect in the region now. For this period, everything has been abnormal. The war has destroyed every facet of our existence: protection, residences, educational centers, aspirations. Fear and grief are constant companions.

Numerous of my students are now deceased – youth who spoke of becoming doctors, creatives, and instructors. They were deprived even the right to exist. Those who remain experience hunger, displacement and fatigue – and however, they still maintain the desire for education.

Sometimes, when the connectivity allows, I hear from a few of them. They message questioning: “Are you OK, teacher?” We exchange short messages, miniature instruction, tiny sparks of interaction amid the turmoil. They question if situations will ever return to usual. I state to them I am uncertain.

Throughout Gaza, instructors, volunteers and charities attempt instruction in all available spaces: in temporary structures, ruined educational areas, or congested safe zones. Schooling has become an gesture of resistance, a way to express: “Our presence continues.” And so long as we continue learning, we will remain.

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