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'We seek action, not sympathy'.

A young student, twelve, Khan Younis

For the past two years since I stepped into a real classroom. Two years since I listened to the morning bell at my former school, sat at my desk and answered questions during my preferred subject. Occasionally I still distinctly recollect the sounds and smells: chalk dust, wooden scraps, joyful sounds in corridors. But my learning place was destroyed; it was targeted not long after the conflict started. My learning materials incinerated, and some of my friends killed.

I was in the fifth year on 7 October: the concluding day I entered the school building. That beginning of the day, alert signals sounded through the halls. Some students wept, others gripped each other. Our educator attempted reassurance, but even she sounded shaky. I remember longing for a normal day; teaching, break time, a verse presentation. Instead, that day marked the end of my old life.

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

Now I reside with my guardians, siblings and sister in a packed refuge in Khan Younis. The tent walls sway with breezes, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We line up for sustenance and drinks. Energy access is fantasy and privacy doesn’t exist. Optimism seems delicate.

At night, I gaze toward the stars through the gaps of my tent and wonder if my peers see the comparable vista. Some message me when they can, expressing they long for education and have kept their old notebooks; like relics of a vanished time. I feel remorseful because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once aspired to entering the education field to assist local youth learn, even when existence was challenging. Now I aim for being a journalist – to compose, to speak and to demonstrate the world what it represents to be a child in Gaza. I want to tell our stories of anxiety and deprivation, but also bravery. Because even here, amid fatality and debris, our voices refuse to be silent.

When online access exists, I try to study digitally. On other occasions, I attend a tiny space where helpers teach us math and Arabic. The sessions are brief – the energy supply stops or the bombing resumes but in those moments, I feel alive. I remember who I was: the young woman who adored mathematics and poetry, who was convinced knowledge could alter reality.

The war has taken so much; our dwellings, schools and families. I grieved for my paternal relative, his wife, and their offspring. I lost my cherished hometown, that southern city, which is nothing but rubble now. But the most painful deprivation of all is education, because without it, our prospects disappear.

To the global audience, I say this: don’t let our dreams die. We seek no sympathy, we require steps. Gaza’s children are entitled to literature, schools and protection. Schooling is not an extravagance, it is a essential privilege. The territory is not merely devastation; it is minors who persist in hoping amid unmanned aircraft at evening. It is my story and I will keep drafting, even if my only possessions is a broken pencil and a fragment of ripped sheet.

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

Naglaa Weshah, 40, teacher in central Gaza

I have been educating in this area for a substantial period. Originally in that urban area, then in Deir al-Balah, and currently in this refugee settlement in the central Gaza Strip. In pre-conflict times, I typically educated six classes of about dozens of learners, hundreds of eager students eager to learn.

Educating them was my purpose and joy in existence, and I still remember the sparkle in a student’s eyes when a knowledge was acquired; the kind of moment every instructor strives for.

I always believed instruction should be vibrant. My classroom was a space of recreation, art, and activity. We created cartographic art, performed past occurrences, and turned lessons into stories.

Merriment always permeated the space as curiosity displaced fear. Yes, even prior to conflict, young residents were always scared. My learning environment was a secure location but after 7 October, the situation transformed.

My educational institution became a shelter for relatives escaping the explosives. Soon, it was struck and entirely ruined. There are almost no learning institutions left standing in Gaza now. For two years, all has been unusual. The hostilities has destroyed every aspect of our reality: security, dwellings, schools, hopes. Anxiety and sorrow are perpetual experiences.

Numerous of my students are now deceased – children who spoke of dreaming of medical professionals, painters, and teachers. They were denied even the right to exist. Those who remain live with malnutrition, eviction and fatigue – and however, they still maintain the will to learn.

Sometimes, when the online access enables, I hear from a few of them. They write asking: “How are you, educator?” We share brief words, abbreviated teaching, tiny sparks of connection amid the chaos. They inquire if situations will ever revert to standard. I state to them I don’t know.

All over Gaza, instructors, volunteers and charities try to teach in any feasible location: in tents, ruined educational areas, or crowded shelters. Learning has become an demonstration of perseverance, a way to express: “We are still here.” And provided that we continue learning, we will persist.

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