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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

A young student, 12, a temporary shelter

For the past two years since I entered a proper school. Two years since I heard the morning bell at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, occupied my place and answered questions during my favourite class. Sometimes I still vividly remember the sounds and smells: chalk dust, pencil shavings, cheerful echoes. But my school no longer exists; it was struck not long after the war began. My learning materials incinerated, and several classmates lost.

I was in fifth grade on 7 October: the concluding day I attended classes. That early hours, air raid sirens sounded through the corridors. Some students wept, others gripped each other. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even she sounded shaky. I remember hoping for a normal day; lessons, break time, a verse presentation. Instead, that day became the last page of my former reality.

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

Now I live with my mother and father, male relatives and female sibling in a crowded shelter in al-Mawasi. The tent walls move with air currents, failing to insulate. We wait in line for water and food. Power is imaginary and privacy doesn’t exist. Hope feels fragile.

At evening, I look up at the stars through the openings of my shelter and wonder if my companions see the identical heavens. Some contact me when they can, expressing they yearn for classes and have retained their former exercise books; like treasures from a lost world. I feel remorseful because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once aspired to pursuing pedagogy to help local youth learn, even when existence was challenging. Now I hope for being a reporter – to write, to talk and to show the world what it means to be a child in Gaza. I want to share our experiences of fear and hunger, but also bravery. Because even in this place, amid fatality and debris, our voices refuse to be silent.

When there’s some internet, I try to study via the web. On other occasions, I go to a tiny space where helpers instruct us arithmetic and Arabic. The lessons are short – the energy supply stops or the airstrikes begin again but in these instances, I feel alive. I remember who I was: the student who loved numbers and poems, who thought learning could change the world.

Hostilities have stolen countless aspects; our homes, educational institutions and relatives. I mourned my uncle, his partner, and their children. I said goodbye to my beloved urban area, that southern city, which is merely debris now. But the most painful deprivation of all is learning, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the global audience, I state this: keep our hopes alive. We don’t want pity, we want action. Young residents deserve literature, schools and security. Learning is not optional, it is a essential privilege. This region is not merely devastation; it is minors who persist in hoping amid unmanned aircraft 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.

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

Naglaa Weshah, forty, teacher in a refugee camp

I have been teaching in Gaza for more than a decade. First in Khan Younis, then in Deir al-Balah, and presently in the central camp in the central Gaza Strip. In pre-conflict times, I typically educated multiple groups of about 40 students each, hundreds of eager students keen on education.

Teaching them was my mission and happiness in existence, and I still recall the gleam in a learner's look when a concept was understood; the sort of occasion every instructor strives for.

I always was convinced learning should be vibrant. My learning environment was a area of amusement, aesthetics, and motion. We created cartographic art, performed past occurrences, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Joy always permeated the space as interest substituted apprehension. Yes, even before the war, children in Gaza were always afraid. My classroom was a protected zone but after the seventh, the situation transformed.

My school became a safe haven for families fleeing the explosives. Not long later, it was targeted and entirely ruined. There are very few schools left standing in Gaza now. For 24 months, everything has been abnormal. The war has destroyed every aspect of our lives: safety, homes, educational centers, hopes. Apprehension and mourning are ever-present realities.

A significant number of my students are now lost – minors who talked about aspiring to be physicians, artists, and educators. They were deprived even the entitlement to survival. Those who are still here experience starvation, relocation and weariness – and nevertheless, they still cling to the will to learn.

Occasionally, when the online access permits, I hear from a small number of them. They write asking: “How are you, instructor?” We share brief words, short lessons, minor flashes of interaction amid the chaos. They question if situations will ever return to usual. I state to them I don’t know.

Across Gaza, teachers, helpers and non-profits try to teach in any feasible location: in temporary structures, destroyed learning spaces, or packed refuges. Schooling has become an act of defiance, a way to express: “We are still here.” And provided that we continue learning, we will remain.

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