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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

A young student, 12, Khan Younis

For the past 24 months since I entered a learning environment. Two years since I listened to the morning bell at my former school, sat at my desk and participated actively during my favourite class. Sometimes I still vividly remember the auditory and olfactory sensations: chalk dust, wooden scraps, joyful sounds in corridors. But my learning place was destroyed; it was bombed shortly after the conflict started. My books were burned, and several classmates lost.

I was in fifth grade on 7 October: the last day I went to school. That beginning of the day, air raid sirens sounded through the corridors. Some students wept, others gripped each other. Our instructor sought to soothe, but even her tone wavered. I remember longing for a routine day; instruction, intermission, a poem recital. Instead, that day became the last page of my old life.

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

Now I dwell alongside my parents, siblings and female sibling in a congested safe space in this coastal area. The temporary partitions sway with breezes, failing to insulate. We wait in line for nourishment and hydration. Electricity is a dream and personal space is absent. Hope feels fragile.

At evening, I look up at the night lights through the gaps of my shelter and wonder if my peers see the same sky. Some reach out when they are able, saying they miss school and have preserved their old notebooks; like relics of a vanished time. I feel guilty because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once dreamed of pursuing pedagogy to assist local youth learn, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I aim for being a writer – to compose, to talk and to reveal the world what it means to be a minor in this region. I want to share our experiences of anxiety and deprivation, but also courage. Because even here, amid fatality and debris, our expressions persist.

When there’s some internet, I attempt learning via the web. On other occasions, I visit a tiny space where volunteers teach us mathematics and language. The lessons are short – the energy supply stops or the airstrikes begin again but in those moments, I feel alive. I remember who I was: the girl who cherished arithmetic and verse, who believed education could transform society.

The war has taken so much; our dwellings, schools and families. I grieved for my paternal relative, his partner, and their children. I lost my beautiful city, that southern city, which is merely debris now. But the toughest sacrifice of all is education, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

To the international community, I state this: don’t let our dreams die. We don’t want pity, we require steps. The youth merit texts, schools and safety. Learning is not a luxury, it is a essential privilege. Gaza is not just ruins; it is children who still dream amid unmanned aircraft at night. It is my story and I will keep drafting, even if all I have left is a damaged writing tool and a piece of torn paper.

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

An educator, forty, teacher in al-Bureij camp

I have been instructing in this area for over ten years. Initially in that urban area, then in Deir al-Balah, and now in the central camp in the central Gaza Strip. Before the war started, I used to teach several sets of about dozens of learners, almost two hundred forty individuals enthusiastic about knowledge.

Educating them was my purpose and joy in reality, and I still recollect the sparkle in a pupil's gaze when a concept was understood; the type of instance every educator lives for.

I always believed instruction should be dynamic. My teaching space was a zone of play, creativity, and movement. We painted maps, dramatized bygone episodes, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Laughter always occupied the area as inquisitiveness displaced apprehension. Certainly, even in earlier times, young residents were always afraid. My teaching space was a protected zone but after the seventh, everything changed.

My learning center became a safe haven for households escaping the explosives. Shortly after, it was targeted and completely destroyed. There are almost no learning institutions left standing in Gaza now. For this period, all has been unusual. The conflict has shattered every aspect of our lives: safety, homes, educational centers, aspirations. Fear and grief are constant companions.

A significant number of my students are now deceased – youth who spoke of becoming physicians, creatives, and teachers. They were denied even the right to exist. Those who survive endure malnutrition, displacement and weariness – and nevertheless, they still cling to the thirst for knowledge.

At times, when the internet enables, I hear from a few of them. They message questioning: “Are you safe, educator?” We communicate concise phrases, miniature instruction, tiny sparks of contact amid the chaos. They ask if things will ever go back to normal. I state to them I have no answer.

Across Gaza, educators, helpers and non-profits try to teach in all available spaces: in tents, damaged classrooms, or packed refuges. Schooling has become an act of defiance, a way to declare: “We persist.” And provided that we keep acquiring knowledge, we will persist.

Numerous of us are also parents. I am a guardian of {three|several