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'We seek action, not sympathy'.

Juwayriya Adwan, 12, al-Mawasi

It has been two years since I entered a real classroom. Two years since I listened to the school chime at my former school, took my seat and participated actively during my beloved lesson. At times I still clearly recall the familiar scents and noises: powder from the board, wooden scraps, joyful sounds in corridors. But my school no longer exists; it was targeted not long after the conflict started. My books were burned, and several classmates lost.

I was in fifth grade on that fateful day: the last day I entered the school building. That beginning of the day, air raid sirens blared through the corridors. Some pupils sobbed, others gripped each other. Our educator attempted reassurance, but even her tone wavered. I remember hoping for a ordinary day; teaching, recess, a poem recital. Instead, that day signaled the conclusion of my former reality.

Hostilities have claimed innumerable aspects. But the hardest loss of all is schooling, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

Now I live with my parents, male relatives and female sibling in a packed refuge in this coastal area. The tent walls sway with breezes, providing no climate control. We wait in line for sustenance and drinks. Energy access is fantasy and privacy doesn’t exist. Hope feels fragile.

At evening, I gaze toward the celestial bodies through the gaps of my tent and ponder if my companions see the comparable vista. Some contact me when they can, expressing they miss school and have retained their former exercise books; like treasures from a lost world. I feel guilty because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once envisioned pursuing pedagogy to support Gaza’s children acquire knowledge, even when life was hard. Now I hope for being a journalist – to compose, to communicate and to demonstrate the world what it means to be a minor in this region. I want to narrate our accounts of apprehension and need, but also courage. Because even in this place, amid death and ruins, our words continue.

When there’s some internet, I try to study digitally. Other times, I attend a modest shelter where aid workers teach us arithmetic and Arabic. The lessons are short – the electricity cuts out or the attacks recommence but in these instances, I feel alive. I recollect who I was: the young woman who loved numbers and poems, who was convinced learning could change the world.

Hostilities have stolen countless aspects; our residences, schools and families. I mourned my family member, his partner, and their young ones. I forfeited my cherished hometown, that southern city, which is merely debris now. But the toughest sacrifice of all is schooling, because without it, our prospects disappear.

To the international community, I express this: preserve our aspirations. Compassion isn't enough, we require steps. Young residents are entitled to literature, educational facilities and protection. Education is not optional, it is a fundamental entitlement. Gaza is not just ruins; it is children who still dream beneath the drones at evening. It is my account and I will keep drafting, even if the sole items remaining is a broken pencil and a scrap of damaged material.

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

An educator, 40, teacher in a refugee camp

I have been instructing in Gaza for more than a decade. Initially in that urban area, then in a different town, and presently in this refugee settlement in the middle of the territory. In pre-conflict times, I regularly instructed multiple groups of about 40 students each, almost two hundred forty individuals keen on education.

Instructing them was my mission and happiness in existence, and I still recall the gleam in a pupil's gaze when a new idea clicked; the kind of moment every teacher lives for.

I always believed education should be full of life. My teaching space was a space of recreation, aesthetics, and movement. We designed geographical illustrations, performed past occurrences, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Joy always filled the room as inquisitiveness replaced anxiety. Indeed, even before the war, young residents were always frightened. My teaching space was a secure location but after the seventh, everything changed.

My learning center became a refuge for families escaping the aerial attacks. Shortly after, it was targeted and totally demolished. There are very few learning institutions left standing in the region now. For this period, nothing has been normal. The hostilities has shattered every aspect of our existence: safety, dwellings, educational centers, hopes. Anxiety and sorrow are constant companions.

Many of my learners are now deceased – minors who mentioned becoming doctors, painters, and teachers. They were deprived even the entitlement to survival. Those who remain live with malnutrition, relocation and weariness – and yet, they still cling to the will to learn.

Sometimes, when the online access enables, I receive messages from a few of them. They contact inquiring: “Are you safe, educator?” We share short messages, abbreviated teaching, tiny sparks of interaction amid the chaos. They ask if circumstances will ever go back to normal. I state to them I don’t know.

All over Gaza, teachers, helpers and charities attempt instruction wherever possible: in temporary structures, destroyed learning spaces, or crowded shelters. Learning has become an gesture of resistance, a way to declare: “We are still here.” And provided that we keep acquiring knowledge, we will persist.

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