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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

A young student, twelve, al-Mawasi

It has been 24 months since I was last inside a learning environment. That long since I heard the start-of-class signal 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 auditory and olfactory sensations: chalk dust, sharpener leftovers, laughter echoing down the halls. But my learning place was destroyed; it was bombed shortly after the conflict started. My textbooks turned to ash, and companions perished.

I was in fifth grade on that fateful day: the concluding day I attended classes. That morning, alert signals sounded through the passageways. Some children cried, others held hands tightly. Our educator attempted reassurance, but even her voice trembled. I remember longing for a normal day; teaching, recess, a verse presentation. Instead, that day became the last page of my old life.

Conflict has stolen countless things. But the hardest loss of all is learning, because that is the loss of the future itself.

Now I dwell alongside my parents, male relatives and female sibling in a crowded shelter in this coastal area. The temporary partitions sway with breezes, failing to insulate. We line up for water and food. Power is imaginary and privacy doesn’t exist. Optimism seems delicate.

At evening, I look up at the night lights through the gaps of my tent and ponder if my companions see the same sky. Some message me when they manage, saying they miss school and have kept their former exercise books; like treasures from a lost world. I feel ashamed because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once aspired to pursuing pedagogy to assist local youth study, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I aim for being a journalist – to compose, to talk and to reveal the world what it means to be a young person in this region. I want to narrate our accounts of apprehension and need, but also courage. Because even amid these conditions, amid loss and destruction, our voices refuse to be silent.

When connectivity is available, I try to study online. Sometimes, I visit a tiny space where volunteers teach us mathematics and language. The instruction is limited – the power fails or the bombing resumes but in such times, I sense being. I recall who I was: the student who adored mathematics and poetry, who thought learning could change the world.

Hostilities have stolen countless aspects; our homes, schools and families. I lost my uncle, his partner, and their children. I forfeited my beautiful city, that southern city, which is nothing but rubble now. But the most painful deprivation of all is learning, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

To the global audience, I state this: keep our hopes alive. Compassion isn't enough, we want action. Gaza’s children deserve texts, educational facilities and protection. Schooling is not optional, it is a basic right. Gaza is not just ruins; it is children who continue to aspire under aerial surveillance at evening. It is my account and I will keep drafting, even if all I have left is a damaged writing tool and a scrap of damaged material.

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

An educator, forty, instructor in a refugee camp

I have been instructing in the region for a substantial period. First in that urban area, then in a different town, and now in the central camp in the heart of the region. Before the war started, I typically educated several sets of about dozens of learners, nearly 240 young minds eager to learn.

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

I always believed instruction should be full of life. My teaching space was a zone of recreation, creativity, and activity. We created cartographic art, performed past occurrences, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Joy always permeated the space as interest substituted apprehension. Certainly, even in earlier times, children in Gaza were always scared. My teaching space was a protected zone but after that day, all was altered.

My educational institution became a safe haven for relatives running from the explosives. Soon, it was struck and totally demolished. There are hardly any educational facilities left standing in the region now. For two years, all has been unusual. The hostilities has broken every facet of our lives: protection, homes, learning places, aspirations. Anxiety and sorrow are ever-present realities.

Many of my learners are now dead – minors who mentioned becoming medical professionals, painters, and teachers. They were deprived even the entitlement to survival. Those who survive endure malnutrition, relocation and exhaustion – and yet, they still maintain the thirst for knowledge.

At times, when the online access allows, I receive messages from a handful of them. They contact inquiring: “How are you, teacher?” We exchange brief words, abbreviated teaching, small glimmers of interaction amid the turmoil. They inquire if circumstances will ever return to usual. I state to them I have no answer.

All over the region, instructors, helpers and non-profits attempt instruction in all available spaces: in temporary structures, damaged classrooms, or crowded shelters. Schooling has become an act of defiance, a way to say: “Our presence continues.” And provided that we persist in education, we will persist.

A significant number of us are also caregivers. I am a guardian of {three|several