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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

Juwayriya Adwan, twelve, al-Mawasi

For the past 24 months since I entered a real classroom. That long since I heard the school chime at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, sat at my desk and raised my hand during my favourite class. Occasionally I still distinctly recollect the sounds and smells: chalk dust, wooden scraps, laughter echoing down the halls. But my learning place was destroyed; it was bombed shortly after the hostilities erupted. My books were burned, and companions perished.

I was in the fifth year on 7 October: the final day I entered the school building. That early hours, air raid sirens sounded through the passageways. Some children cried, others gripped each other. Our educator attempted reassurance, but even her tone wavered. I remember wishing for a ordinary day; lessons, recess, a poem recital. Instead, that day signaled the conclusion of my former reality.

Conflict has stolen countless things. But the toughest sacrifice of all is education, because that is the loss of the future itself.

Now I dwell alongside my mother and father, two brothers and sister in a packed refuge in al-Mawasi. The tent walls move with air currents, failing to insulate. We queue for water and food. Electricity is a dream and privacy doesn’t exist. 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 contact me when they can, stating they miss school and have preserved their previous journals; like valuables from a bygone era. I feel guilty because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once aspired to entering the education field to assist Gaza’s children study, even when life was hard. Now I dream of being a writer – to compose, to speak and to demonstrate the world what it means to be a minor in the Strip. I want to share our experiences of apprehension and need, but also fortitude. Because even in this place, amid fatality and debris, our words continue.

When there’s some internet, I attempt learning via the web. Other times, I visit a tiny space where volunteers educate us mathematics and language. The sessions are brief – the power fails or the bombing resumes but in those moments, I experience vitality. I recollect who I was: the girl who loved numbers and poems, who was convinced knowledge could alter reality.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our dwellings, learning centers and families. I lost my paternal relative, his spouse, and their children. I said goodbye to my beautiful city, that southern city, which is merely debris now. But the hardest loss of all is education, because without it, our prospects disappear.

To the world, I express this: don’t let our dreams die. Compassion isn't enough, we demand measures. Gaza’s children are entitled to texts, schools and protection. Schooling is not a luxury, it is a essential privilege. This region is not only destruction; it is children who continue to aspire amid unmanned aircraft at darkness. It is my account and I will continue writing, even if my only possessions is a fractured utensil and a fragment of ripped sheet.

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

An educator, forty, instructor in al-Bureij camp

I have been educating in Gaza for more than a decade. Originally in that urban area, then in a different town, and presently in this refugee settlement in the middle of the territory. Prior to hostilities, I used to teach six classes of about 40 students each, nearly 240 young minds keen on education.

Educating them was my vocation and delight in reality, and I still remember the sparkle in a pupil's gaze when a new idea clicked; the type of instance every educator strives for.

I always was convinced instruction should be vibrant. My teaching space was a zone of amusement, creativity, and movement. We designed geographical illustrations, acted out historical events, and turned lessons into stories.

Merriment always permeated the space as curiosity displaced apprehension. Indeed, even before the war, children in Gaza were always frightened. My teaching space was a protected zone but after 7 October, everything changed.

My learning center became a shelter for relatives fleeing the aerial attacks. Soon, it was attacked and entirely ruined. There are hardly any learning institutions left standing in this area now. For two years, everything has been abnormal. The war has shattered every facet of our lives: protection, dwellings, educational centers, dreams. Fear and grief are ever-present realities.

A significant number of my learners are now deceased – children who spoke of aspiring to be doctors, painters, and instructors. They were denied even the entitlement to survival. Those who are still here experience hunger, relocation and fatigue – and however, they still maintain the thirst for knowledge.

Occasionally, when the internet permits, I get in touch with a small number of them. They message asking: “How are you, instructor?” We exchange short messages, abbreviated teaching, small glimmers of connection amid the chaos. They ask if situations will ever return to usual. I tell them I don’t know.

All over Gaza, educators, aid workers and organizations endeavor education in all available spaces: in shelters, destroyed learning spaces, or crowded shelters. Education has become an gesture of resistance, a way to say: “Our presence continues.” And as long as we keep acquiring knowledge, we will remain.

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