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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

Juwayriya Adwan, twelve, Khan Younis

For the past 24 months since I stepped into a learning environment. Two years since I heard the morning bell at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, sat at my desk and raised my hand during my preferred subject. At times I still vividly remember the sounds and smells: powder from the board, wooden scraps, laughter echoing down the halls. But my educational institution is gone; it was struck shortly after the war began. My textbooks turned to ash, and companions perished.

I was in the fifth year on that fateful day: the last day I attended classes. That early hours, alert signals sounded through the corridors. Some pupils sobbed, others gripped each other. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even she sounded shaky. I remember hoping for a routine day; instruction, break time, a poem recital. Instead, that day became the last page of my old life.

Conflict has stolen countless things. But the toughest sacrifice of all is learning, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

Now I reside with my mother and father, two brothers and female sibling in a crowded shelter in al-Mawasi. The temporary partitions move with air currents, providing no climate control. We wait in line for nourishment and hydration. Energy access is fantasy and privacy doesn’t exist. Aspiration appears brittle.

At night, I gaze toward the celestial bodies through the gaps of my tent and ponder if my peers see the comparable vista. Some message me when they manage, saying they yearn for classes and have retained their old notebooks; like valuables from a bygone era. I feel remorseful because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once aspired to becoming a teacher to support young residents acquire knowledge, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I aim for being a journalist – to write, to communicate and to demonstrate the world what it signifies to be a young person in the Strip. I want to narrate our accounts of apprehension and need, but also courage. Because even in this place, amid fatality and debris, our words continue.

When there’s some internet, I endeavor to educate myself via the web. Other times, I visit a tiny space where aid workers instruct us mathematics and language. The lessons are short – the energy supply stops or the airstrikes begin again but in these instances, I experience vitality. I remember who I was: the student who cherished arithmetic and verse, who thought education could transform society.

The war has taken so much; our dwellings, schools and families. I mourned my paternal relative, his partner, and their young ones. I forfeited my cherished hometown, my previous home, which is nothing but rubble now. But the toughest sacrifice of all is learning, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

To the global audience, I say this: don’t let our dreams die. We seek no sympathy, we require steps. The youth merit texts, schools and protection. Learning is not optional, it is a essential privilege. This region is not merely devastation; it is youth who continue to aspire amid unmanned aircraft at darkness. It is my story and I will persist in composing, even if the sole items remaining is a fractured utensil and a piece of torn paper.

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

An educator, forty, instructor in a refugee camp

I have been instructing in the region for over ten years. Initially in that urban area, then in a different town, and presently in this refugee settlement in the central Gaza Strip. Before the war started, I typically educated multiple groups of about 40 students each, almost two hundred forty individuals keen on education.

Educating them was my vocation and delight in existence, and I still remember the twinkle in a student’s eyes when a new idea clicked; the type of instance every educator strives for.

I always thought education should be vibrant. My learning environment was a area of play, art, and motion. We created cartographic art, performed past occurrences, and converted teaching into tales.

Merriment always occupied the area as interest displaced fear. Indeed, even before the war, children in Gaza were always afraid. My learning environment was a protected zone but after 7 October, everything changed.

My educational institution became a shelter for relatives fleeing the aerial attacks. Soon, it was struck and completely destroyed. There are very few learning institutions left standing in this area now. For this period, everything has been abnormal. The conflict has broken every aspect of our existence: protection, residences, schools, aspirations. Apprehension and mourning are perpetual experiences.

A significant number of my pupils are now lost – children who talked about aspiring to be medical professionals, creatives, and instructors. They were denied even the entitlement to survival. Those who survive live with hunger, displacement and weariness – and yet, they still hold onto the thirst for knowledge.

Occasionally, when the internet permits, I receive messages from a small number of them. They message inquiring: “How are you, educator?” We share short messages, short lessons, tiny sparks of connection amid the chaos. They inquire if things will ever revert to standard. I tell them I have no answer.

All over Gaza, instructors, aid workers and non-profits try to teach in all available spaces: in shelters, damaged classrooms, or crowded shelters. Learning has become an demonstration of perseverance, a way to declare: “We are still here.” And so long as we continue learning, we will persist.

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