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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

A young student, twelve, Khan Younis

It has been 24 months since I was last inside a learning environment. Two years since I listened to the start-of-class signal at my former school, sat at my desk and answered questions during my favourite class. Sometimes I still vividly remember the familiar scents and noises: powder from the board, sharpener leftovers, joyful sounds in corridors. But my educational institution is gone; it was targeted shortly after the war began. My textbooks turned to ash, and several classmates lost.

I was in elementary level on 7 October: the final day I attended classes. That beginning of the day, alert signals blared through the corridors. Some pupils sobbed, others clasped palms firmly. Our instructor sought to soothe, but even her tone wavered. I remember hoping for a ordinary day; instruction, intermission, a poem recital. Instead, that day marked the end of my former reality.

The war has taken so much. But the hardest loss of all is schooling, because without it, our prospects disappear.

Now I live with my guardians, two brothers and sister in a crowded shelter in Khan Younis. The temporary partitions sway with breezes, providing no climate control. We wait in line for nourishment and hydration. Electricity is a dream and seclusion is unavailable. Hope feels fragile.

At night, I look up at the night lights through the openings of my tent and ponder if my companions see the same sky. Some contact me when they manage, saying they miss school and have preserved their previous journals; like relics of a vanished time. I feel ashamed because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once dreamed of pursuing pedagogy to assist young residents study, even when life was hard. Now I aim for being a writer – to compose, to speak and to demonstrate the world what it signifies to be a minor in Gaza. I want to narrate our accounts of apprehension and need, but also courage. Because even amid these conditions, amid fatality and debris, our expressions persist.

When online access exists, I attempt learning online. Sometimes, I visit a modest shelter where helpers educate us mathematics and language. The sessions are brief – the power fails or the bombing resumes but in such times, I sense being. I recollect who I was: the student who cherished arithmetic and verse, who was convinced education could transform society.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our residences, educational institutions and families. I grieved for my paternal relative, his partner, and their young ones. I forfeited my beautiful city, Rafah, which is only ruins now. But the hardest loss of all is education, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the international community, I say this: don’t let our dreams die. We seek no sympathy, we demand measures. Young residents are entitled to literature, educational facilities and security. Learning is not a luxury, it is a fundamental entitlement. The territory is not only destruction; it is youth who still dream amid unmanned aircraft at night. It is my account and I will continue writing, even if all I have left is a fractured utensil and a fragment of ripped sheet.

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

An educator, forty, teacher in central Gaza

I have been instructing in the region for more than a decade. Originally in Khan Younis, then in a different town, and presently in the central camp in the central Gaza Strip. Before the war started, I regularly instructed several sets of about fourty pupils per class, almost two hundred forty individuals keen on education.

Instructing them was my mission and happiness in life, and I still recollect the twinkle in a student’s eyes when a new idea clicked; the type of instance every teacher lives for.

I always thought instruction should be full of life. My classroom was a space of recreation, creativity, and movement. We created cartographic art, dramatized bygone episodes, and converted teaching into tales.

Merriment always occupied the area as inquisitiveness displaced anxiety. Certainly, even prior to conflict, children in Gaza were always frightened. My teaching space was a place of safety but after the seventh, everything changed.

My school became a refuge for families fleeing the explosives. Soon, it was attacked and entirely ruined. There are almost no learning institutions remaining intact in Gaza now. For two years, all has been unusual. The war has destroyed every aspect of our lives: security, homes, schools, aspirations. Anxiety and sorrow are ever-present realities.

Numerous of my students are now lost – children who mentioned dreaming of doctors, painters, and educators. They were denied even the right to exist. Those who remain live with starvation, relocation and exhaustion – and nevertheless, they still cling to the thirst for knowledge.

At times, when the connectivity allows, I get in touch with a small number of them. They contact questioning: “How are you, teacher?” We share short messages, abbreviated teaching, tiny sparks of connection amid the disorder. They question if situations will ever revert to standard. I inform them I have no answer.

Throughout the region, teachers, volunteers and non-profits attempt instruction wherever possible: in tents, destroyed learning spaces, or crowded shelters. Schooling has become an gesture of resistance, a way to declare: “Our presence continues.” And as long as we continue learning, we will endure.

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