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'We seek action, not sympathy'.

A young student, twelve, Khan Younis

It has been 24 months since I entered a proper school. That long since I heard the school chime at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, occupied my place and participated actively during my favourite class. Sometimes I still vividly remember the sounds and smells: writing residue, pencil shavings, joyful sounds in corridors. But my educational institution is gone; it was struck shortly after the conflict started. My learning materials incinerated, and companions perished.

I was in elementary level on the seventh of October: the last day I entered the school building. That morning, air raid sirens blared through the passageways. Some students wept, others gripped each other. Our educator attempted reassurance, but even her voice trembled. I remember longing for a ordinary day; teaching, recess, a poem recital. Instead, that day became the last page of my former reality.

Hostilities have claimed innumerable aspects. But the hardest loss of all is schooling, 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 temporary partitions move with air currents, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We queue for nourishment and hydration. Power is imaginary and seclusion is unavailable. Aspiration appears brittle.

At evening, I gaze toward the night lights through the openings of my tent and ponder if my peers see the identical heavens. 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 forfeited all of mine.

I once dreamed of becoming a teacher to assist local youth learn, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I dream of being a reporter – to write, to talk and to show the world what it represents to be a young person in Gaza. I want to tell our stories of apprehension and need, but also fortitude. Because even here, amid fatality and debris, our words continue.

When there’s some internet, I try to study via the web. Sometimes, I visit a small tent where helpers instruct us mathematics and language. The lessons are short – the electricity cuts out or the bombing resumes but in these instances, I sense being. I recollect who I was: the girl who adored mathematics and poetry, who believed learning could change the world.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our dwellings, schools and kin. I grieved for my family member, his partner, and their offspring. I said goodbye to my beloved urban area, my previous home, 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 international community, I say this: keep our hopes alive. We seek no sympathy, we require steps. Gaza’s children are entitled to literature, learning environments and safety. Learning is not an extravagance, it is a basic right. This region is not merely devastation; it is children who continue to aspire under aerial surveillance at evening. It is my story and I will persist in composing, even if my only possessions is a broken pencil and a fragment of ripped sheet.

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

An educator, forty, instructor in a refugee camp

I have been educating in Gaza for over ten years. First in that urban area, then in a different town, and currently in the central camp in the middle of the territory. In pre-conflict times, I used to teach several sets of about fourty pupils per class, nearly 240 young minds enthusiastic about knowledge.

Teaching them was my vocation and delight in life, and I still recall the twinkle in a student’s eyes when a concept was understood; the sort of occasion every teacher strives for.

I always was convinced instruction should be full of life. My learning environment was a space of play, creativity, and activity. We created cartographic art, dramatized bygone episodes, and converted teaching into tales.

Joy always permeated the space as inquisitiveness substituted fear. Indeed, even in earlier times, local youth were always frightened. My classroom was a place of safety but after 7 October, the situation transformed.

My educational institution became a shelter for households fleeing the bombs. Not long later, it was attacked and totally demolished. There are hardly any learning institutions still erect in the region now. For this period, all has been unusual. The hostilities has broken every part of our existence: protection, dwellings, learning places, aspirations. Fear and grief are constant companions.

Many of my pupils are now lost – children who mentioned aspiring to be doctors, creatives, and teachers. They were denied even the privilege of living. Those who are still here experience malnutrition, eviction and fatigue – and however, they still cling to the will to learn.

Occasionally, when the connectivity allows, I get in touch with a few of them. They message inquiring: “Are you OK, teacher?” We exchange short messages, short lessons, small glimmers of contact amid the turmoil. They question if circumstances will ever revert to standard. I tell them I have no answer.

Across Gaza, educators, helpers and organizations endeavor education in all available spaces: in temporary structures, destroyed learning spaces, or congested safe zones. Schooling has become an gesture of resistance, a way to declare: “We are still here.” And provided that we persist in education, we will remain.

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