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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

A young student, 12, al-Mawasi

For the past two years since I was last inside a learning environment. That long since I listened to the school chime at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, sat at my desk and raised my hand during my preferred subject. At times I still vividly remember the familiar scents and noises: writing residue, wooden scraps, cheerful echoes. But my school no longer exists; it was targeted shortly after the conflict started. My learning materials incinerated, and several classmates lost.

I was in fifth grade on 7 October: the concluding day I entered the school building. That morning, air raid sirens screamed through the corridors. Some pupils sobbed, others clasped palms firmly. Our instructor sought to soothe, but even she sounded shaky. I remember hoping for a normal day; instruction, intermission, a literary performance. Instead, that day marked the end of my former reality.

Conflict has stolen countless things. But the most painful deprivation of all is schooling, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

Now I reside with my parents, siblings and sister in a packed refuge in Khan Younis. The temporary partitions flap in the wind, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We queue for sustenance and drinks. Power is imaginary and privacy doesn’t exist. Hope feels fragile.

At evening, I gaze toward the stars through the gaps of my temporary home and ponder if my friends see the identical heavens. Some contact me when they manage, expressing they miss school and have preserved their previous journals; like relics of a vanished time. I feel ashamed because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once envisioned pursuing pedagogy to support Gaza’s children study, even when life was hard. Now I aim for being a writer – to write, to communicate and to show the world what it represents to be a young person in this region. I want to narrate our accounts of fear and hunger, but also courage. Because even amid these conditions, amid death and ruins, our voices refuse to be silent.

When connectivity is available, I try to study online. On other occasions, I attend a tiny space where helpers instruct us math and Arabic. The instruction is limited – the electricity cuts out or the bombing resumes but in such times, I experience vitality. I remember who I was: the student who adored mathematics and poetry, who believed education could transform society.

The war has taken so much; our residences, schools and families. I lost my family member, his wife, and their children. I lost my cherished hometown, my previous home, which is only ruins now. But the toughest sacrifice of all is learning, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

To the international community, I express this: don’t let our dreams die. Compassion isn't enough, we demand measures. Young residents merit books, learning environments and security. Schooling is not optional, it is a fundamental entitlement. This region is not only destruction; it is minors who still dream under aerial surveillance at evening. It is my narrative and I will persist in composing, even if my only possessions is a damaged writing tool and a scrap of damaged material.

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

An educator, forty, instructor in central Gaza

I have been instructing in this area for a substantial period. First in that urban area, then in a different town, and currently in this refugee settlement in the central Gaza Strip. Prior to hostilities, I regularly instructed several sets of about fourty pupils per class, hundreds of eager students eager to learn.

Teaching them was my vocation and delight in existence, and I still recollect the sparkle in a learner's look when a new idea clicked; the type of instance every instructor cherishes.

I always thought learning should be vibrant. My teaching space was a space of play, creativity, and activity. We created cartographic art, dramatized bygone episodes, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Laughter always filled the room as interest substituted anxiety. Yes, even in earlier times, children in Gaza were always scared. My learning environment was a secure location but after the seventh, the situation transformed.

My school became a shelter for households escaping the aerial attacks. Not long later, it was attacked and entirely ruined. There are hardly any educational facilities remaining intact in this area now. For this period, all has been unusual. The hostilities has destroyed every aspect of our reality: protection, dwellings, learning places, dreams. Anxiety and sorrow are constant companions.

Many of my pupils are now deceased – minors who spoke of aspiring to be doctors, artists, and educators. They were denied even the right to exist. Those who remain experience malnutrition, displacement and fatigue – and however, they still hold onto the will to learn.

At times, when the online access allows, I get in touch with a few of them. They write inquiring: “How are you, teacher?” We share brief words, short lessons, tiny sparks of connection amid the chaos. They inquire if things will ever go back to normal. I tell them I have no answer.

All over this territory, educators, helpers and non-profits endeavor education in all available spaces: in tents, 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 remain.

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