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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

A young student, twelve, al-Mawasi

For the past two years since I was last inside a real classroom. Two years since I listened to the start-of-class signal at my former school, sat at my desk and raised my hand during my beloved lesson. Sometimes I still vividly remember the familiar scents and noises: chalk dust, sharpener leftovers, joyful sounds in corridors. But my school no longer exists; it was targeted soon after the war began. My textbooks turned to ash, and several classmates lost.

I was in elementary level on that fateful day: the final day I entered the school building. That beginning of the day, air raid sirens screamed through the halls. Some pupils sobbed, others held hands tightly. Our instructor sought to soothe, but even her voice trembled. I remember hoping for a routine day; lessons, break time, a poem recital. Instead, that day signaled the conclusion of my old life.

The war has taken so much. But the hardest loss of all is learning, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

Now I reside with my guardians, male relatives and female sibling in a crowded shelter in this coastal area. The temporary partitions flap in the wind, failing to insulate. We line up for nourishment and hydration. Power is imaginary and seclusion is unavailable. Aspiration appears brittle.

At night, I gaze toward the stars through the gaps of my temporary home and ponder if my companions see the same sky. Some reach out when they manage, expressing they long for education and have retained their former exercise books; like valuables from a bygone era. I feel remorseful because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once envisioned pursuing pedagogy to help young residents learn, even when existence was challenging. Now I hope for being a reporter – to draft, to talk and to demonstrate the world what it signifies to be a young person in the Strip. I want to narrate our accounts of fear and hunger, but also courage. Because even in this place, amid death and ruins, our voices refuse to be silent.

When online access exists, I attempt learning online. Other times, I visit a small tent where aid workers instruct us mathematics and language. The lessons are short – the power fails or the airstrikes begin again but in those moments, I feel alive. I remember who I was: the young woman who loved numbers and poems, who believed knowledge could alter reality.

Hostilities have stolen countless aspects; our residences, schools and kin. I grieved for my uncle, his wife, and their offspring. I lost my beloved urban area, my previous home, which is nothing but rubble now. But the most painful deprivation of all is schooling, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the global audience, I say this: preserve our aspirations. We seek no sympathy, we want action. Gaza’s children deserve books, learning environments and protection. Learning is not an extravagance, it is a basic right. The territory is not just ruins; it is youth who persist in hoping under aerial surveillance at night. It is my account and I will keep drafting, even if all I have left is a broken pencil and a piece of torn paper.

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

An educator, 40, instructor in central Gaza

I have been educating in the region for a substantial period. First in Khan Younis, then in another location, and now in this refugee settlement in the middle of the territory. In pre-conflict times, I typically educated several sets of about 40 students each, almost two hundred forty individuals keen on education.

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

I always believed learning should be dynamic. My learning environment was a zone of amusement, art, and motion. We painted maps, acted out historical events, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Laughter always filled the room as interest displaced anxiety. Yes, even prior to conflict, local youth were always frightened. My learning environment was a protected zone but after the seventh, all was altered.

My learning center became a safe haven for families running from the explosives. Soon, it was targeted and completely destroyed. There are very few schools left standing in the region now. For two years, all has been unusual. The hostilities has broken every facet of our existence: protection, homes, learning places, hopes. Anxiety and sorrow are perpetual experiences.

Many of my students are now deceased – youth who spoke of aspiring to be physicians, creatives, and instructors. They were refused even the right to exist. Those who survive endure starvation, eviction and exhaustion – and nevertheless, they still hold onto the thirst for knowledge.

Sometimes, when the internet enables, I receive messages from a few of them. They message questioning: “How are you, educator?” We communicate brief words, miniature instruction, small glimmers of connection amid the disorder. They inquire if circumstances will ever go back to normal. I tell them I am uncertain.

Across Gaza, instructors, aid workers and charities try to teach in any feasible location: in temporary structures, damaged classrooms, or packed refuges. Education has become an gesture of resistance, a way to express: “Our presence continues.” And so long as we continue learning, we will persist.

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