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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

Juwayriya Adwan, twelve, al-Mawasi

It has been 24 months since I was last inside a real classroom. Two years since I heard the morning bell at my former school, occupied my place and raised my hand during my preferred subject. Occasionally I still distinctly recollect the sounds and smells: writing residue, sharpener leftovers, joyful sounds in corridors. But my educational institution is gone; it was targeted shortly after the conflict started. My textbooks turned to ash, and several classmates lost.

I was in the fifth year on 7 October: the final day I attended classes. That beginning of the day, warning alarms sounded through the corridors. Some children cried, others gripped each other. Our educator attempted reassurance, but even her voice trembled. I remember wishing for a normal day; lessons, recess, a verse presentation. Instead, that day marked the end of my previous existence.

The war has taken so much. But the most painful deprivation of all is learning, because without it, our prospects disappear.

Now I dwell alongside my parents, siblings and sister in a packed refuge in Khan Younis. The temporary partitions flap in the wind, providing no climate control. We queue for sustenance and drinks. Power is imaginary and seclusion is unavailable. Hope feels fragile.

At darkness, I observe the celestial bodies through the holes of my temporary home and ponder if my peers see the comparable vista. Some contact me when they manage, saying they yearn for classes and have preserved their former exercise books; like treasures from a lost world. I feel remorseful because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once aspired to becoming a teacher to support young residents acquire knowledge, even when life was hard. Now I hope for being a reporter – to compose, to communicate and to demonstrate the world what it means to be a child in this region. I want to narrate our accounts of anxiety and deprivation, but also fortitude. Because even here, amid fatality and debris, our voices refuse to be silent.

When online access exists, I endeavor to educate myself digitally. On other occasions, I attend a small tent where volunteers teach us arithmetic and Arabic. The instruction is limited – the energy supply stops or the airstrikes begin again but in those moments, I sense being. I remember who I was: the young woman who loved numbers and poems, who thought education could transform society.

Hostilities have stolen countless aspects; our residences, educational institutions and kin. I grieved for my family member, his spouse, and their children. I forfeited my cherished hometown, that southern city, which is merely debris now. But the hardest loss of all is schooling, because without it, our prospects disappear.

To the international community, I express this: keep our hopes alive. We don’t want pity, we require steps. The youth merit literature, educational facilities and safety. Learning is not optional, it is a basic right. Gaza is not merely devastation; it is minors who continue to aspire under aerial surveillance at night. It is my account and I will persist in composing, even if the sole items remaining is a broken pencil and a scrap of damaged material.

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

An educator, forty, instructor in a refugee camp

I have been teaching in this area for a substantial period. Initially in a southern city, then in another location, and now in al-Bureij camp in the heart of the region. Before the war started, I typically educated six classes of about 40 students each, hundreds of eager students enthusiastic about knowledge.

Instructing them was my mission and happiness in reality, and I still recollect the twinkle in a learner's look when a concept was understood; the kind of moment every teacher strives for.

I always was convinced education should be dynamic. My classroom was a area of play, aesthetics, and movement. We designed geographical illustrations, acted out historical events, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Merriment always occupied the area as inquisitiveness displaced anxiety. Certainly, even before the war, local youth were always afraid. My learning environment was a protected zone but after the seventh, the situation transformed.

My school became a shelter for households fleeing the explosives. Not long later, it was targeted and entirely ruined. There are very few schools still erect in Gaza now. For this period, nothing has been normal. The war has shattered every aspect of our reality: protection, residences, schools, dreams. Anxiety and sorrow are constant companions.

A significant number of my learners are now lost – children who mentioned dreaming of physicians, creatives, and educators. They were refused even the privilege of living. Those who remain experience hunger, relocation and exhaustion – and yet, they still hold onto the thirst for knowledge.

Occasionally, when the internet allows, I get in touch with a small number of them. They write inquiring: “Are you safe, educator?” We exchange brief words, abbreviated teaching, small glimmers of contact amid the disorder. They question if circumstances will ever return to usual. I inform them I don’t know.

Across the region, educators, volunteers and charities endeavor education in any feasible location: in shelters, destroyed learning spaces, or congested safe zones. Schooling has become an demonstration of perseverance, a way to express: “We are still here.” And as long as we keep acquiring knowledge, we will remain.

Numerous of us are also caregivers. I am a parent of {three|several