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'Our plea is for action, not compassion'.

Juwayriya Adwan, twelve, al-Mawasi

For the past 24 months since I was last inside a learning environment. Two years since I heard the start-of-class signal at the institution I attended, took my seat and answered questions during my preferred subject. Sometimes I still distinctly recollect the sounds and smells: chalk dust, sharpener leftovers, joyful sounds in corridors. But my educational institution is gone; it was bombed not long after the conflict started. My textbooks turned to ash, and some of my friends killed.

I was in elementary level on the seventh of October: the final day I entered the school building. That morning, warning alarms sounded through the passageways. Some pupils sobbed, others gripped each other. Our instructor sought to soothe, but even she sounded shaky. I remember hoping for a ordinary day; teaching, intermission, a poem recital. Instead, that day marked the end of my old life.

Hostilities have claimed innumerable aspects. But the hardest loss of all is education, because without it, our prospects disappear.

Now I dwell alongside my parents, siblings and sister in a crowded shelter in this coastal area. The temporary partitions sway with breezes, providing no climate control. We line up for sustenance and drinks. Energy access is fantasy and privacy doesn’t exist. Aspiration appears brittle.

At darkness, I observe the stars through the holes of my tent and question if my companions see the identical heavens. Some contact me when they are able, expressing they miss school and have kept their old notebooks; like relics of a vanished time. I feel ashamed because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once aspired to becoming a teacher to help Gaza’s children study, even when existence was challenging. Now I dream of being a writer – to draft, to communicate and to show the world what it means to be a minor in this region. I want to share our experiences of apprehension and need, but also bravery. Because even here, amid fatality and debris, our words continue.

When there’s some internet, I endeavor to educate myself online. On other occasions, I attend a modest shelter where helpers educate us math and Arabic. The lessons are short – the energy supply stops or the attacks recommence but in such times, I feel alive. I recollect who I was: the young woman who loved numbers and poems, who was convinced education could transform society.

The war has taken so much; our dwellings, educational institutions and relatives. I grieved for my family member, his partner, and their offspring. I forfeited my beautiful city, that southern city, which is only ruins now. But the toughest sacrifice of all is schooling, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

To the global audience, I state this: keep our hopes alive. We don’t want pity, we require steps. The youth deserve books, educational facilities and protection. Schooling is not a luxury, it is a basic right. The territory is not merely devastation; it is youth who still dream beneath the drones at night. It is my story and I will persist in composing, even if my only possessions is a damaged writing tool and a piece of torn paper.

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

An educator, forty, teacher in a refugee camp

I have been educating in the region for more than a decade. Originally in a southern city, then in a different town, and currently in the central camp in the heart of the region. Prior to hostilities, I regularly instructed six classes of about dozens of learners, almost two hundred forty individuals eager to learn.

Instructing them was my purpose and joy in life, and I still remember the sparkle in a student’s eyes when a concept was understood; the type of instance every teacher strives for.

I always was convinced learning should be dynamic. My classroom was a zone of play, aesthetics, and motion. We painted maps, dramatized bygone episodes, and turned lessons into stories.

Joy always permeated the space as interest substituted anxiety. Certainly, even before the war, young residents were always afraid. My learning environment was a place of safety but after the seventh, everything changed.

My learning center became a safe haven for households running from the explosives. Soon, it was attacked and completely destroyed. There are very few educational facilities left standing in Gaza now. For 24 months, all has been unusual. The war has destroyed every aspect of our existence: safety, dwellings, schools, aspirations. Fear and grief are ever-present realities.

Numerous of my pupils are now lost – children who talked about becoming doctors, creatives, and teachers. They were refused even the entitlement to survival. Those who remain endure malnutrition, relocation and exhaustion – and nevertheless, they still hold onto the desire for education.

Occasionally, when the internet enables, I hear from a small number of them. They write asking: “How are you, teacher?” We exchange brief words, abbreviated teaching, minor flashes of connection amid the chaos. They inquire if circumstances will ever return to usual. I inform them I have no answer.

Across the region, instructors, helpers and organizations attempt instruction wherever possible: in temporary structures, ruined educational areas, or congested safe zones. Education has become an act of defiance, a way to say: “We are still here.” And as long as we continue learning, we will persist.

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