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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

Juwayriya Adwan, 12, Khan Younis

For the past two years since I was last inside a proper school. That long since I heard the start-of-class signal at my former school, sat at my desk and answered questions during my favourite class. Occasionally I still clearly recall the auditory and olfactory sensations: powder from the board, pencil shavings, joyful sounds in corridors. But my learning place was destroyed; it was bombed not long after the conflict started. My textbooks turned to ash, and some of my friends killed.

I was in the fifth year on that fateful day: the final day I attended classes. That beginning of the day, alert signals screamed through the corridors. Some students wept, others clasped palms firmly. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even her voice trembled. I remember hoping for a ordinary day; lessons, intermission, a literary performance. Instead, that day became the last page of my old life.

Hostilities have claimed innumerable aspects. But the most painful deprivation of all is learning, because that is the loss of the future itself.

Now I dwell alongside my mother and father, male relatives and sister in a packed refuge in al-Mawasi. The tent walls sway with breezes, providing no climate control. We wait in line for sustenance and drinks. Power is imaginary and privacy doesn’t exist. Aspiration appears brittle.

At darkness, I observe the night lights through the openings of my tent and ponder if my friends see the comparable vista. Some reach out when they manage, expressing they long for education and have preserved their old notebooks; like treasures from a lost world. I feel guilty because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once dreamed of pursuing pedagogy to support local youth study, even when life was hard. Now I hope for being a writer – to draft, to speak and to demonstrate the world what it signifies to be a young person in Gaza. I want to tell our stories of apprehension and need, but also bravery. Because even amid these conditions, amid death and ruins, our words continue.

When there’s some internet, I attempt learning via the web. Sometimes, I go to a tiny space where aid workers teach us mathematics and language. The sessions are brief – the electricity cuts out or the bombing resumes but in such times, I sense being. I recollect who I was: the girl who adored mathematics and poetry, who was convinced knowledge could alter reality.

Hostilities have stolen countless aspects; our dwellings, educational institutions and kin. I mourned my paternal relative, his spouse, and their children. I forfeited my cherished hometown, my previous home, which is only ruins now. But the toughest sacrifice of all is education, because without it, our prospects disappear.

To the global audience, I say this: preserve our aspirations. Compassion isn't enough, we demand measures. The youth are entitled to texts, learning environments and safety. Schooling is not an extravagance, it is a essential privilege. This region is not just ruins; it is minors who still dream beneath the drones at night. It is my narrative and I will keep drafting, even if my only possessions is a broken pencil and a fragment of ripped sheet.

'They message: "are you OK, teacher?"'.

Naglaa Weshah, forty, teacher in a refugee camp

I have been teaching in Gaza for more than a decade. Initially in that urban area, then in a different town, and currently in al-Bureij camp in the central Gaza Strip. In pre-conflict times, I regularly instructed six classes of about 40 students each, nearly 240 young minds keen on education.

Teaching them was my purpose and joy in life, and I still recollect the twinkle in a student’s eyes when a new idea clicked; the kind of moment every teacher strives for.

I always believed education should be dynamic. My classroom was a space of play, creativity, and movement. We created cartographic art, dramatized bygone episodes, and turned lessons into stories.

Merriment always permeated the space as interest displaced fear. Indeed, even before the war, young residents were always frightened. My teaching space was a protected zone but after the seventh, the situation transformed.

My school became a refuge for families running from the bombs. Not long later, it was struck and totally demolished. There are almost no educational facilities still erect in the region now. For this period, all has been unusual. The conflict has destroyed every part of our existence: safety, dwellings, educational centers, aspirations. Anxiety and sorrow are ever-present realities.

Numerous of my learners are now deceased – minors who talked about aspiring to be medical professionals, painters, and teachers. They were deprived even the entitlement to survival. Those who survive endure starvation, displacement and exhaustion – and nevertheless, they still maintain the will to learn.

Occasionally, when the internet permits, I receive messages from a few of them. They write questioning: “How are you, instructor?” We communicate short messages, short lessons, tiny sparks of contact amid the turmoil. They ask if situations will ever revert to standard. I state to them I have no answer.

Across this territory, teachers, helpers and organizations attempt instruction wherever possible: in shelters, destroyed learning spaces, or packed refuges. Learning has become an act of defiance, a way to express: “We are still here.” And so long as we keep acquiring knowledge, we will remain.

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