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'We seek action, not sympathy'.

Juwayriya Adwan, twelve, Khan Younis

It has been two years since I entered a real classroom. Two years since I heard the school chime at the institution I attended, sat at my desk and raised my hand during my beloved lesson. Occasionally I still distinctly recollect the auditory and olfactory sensations: powder from the board, wooden scraps, laughter echoing down the halls. But my educational institution is gone; it was targeted soon after the war began. My textbooks turned to ash, and some of my friends killed.

I was in fifth grade on the seventh of October: the concluding day I entered the school building. That morning, warning alarms screamed through the halls. Some students wept, others clasped palms firmly. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even her tone wavered. I remember wishing for a routine day; instruction, break time, a poem recital. Instead, that day signaled the conclusion of my previous existence.

The war has taken so much. But the hardest loss of all is education, because that is the loss of the future itself.

Now I live with my guardians, two brothers and sister in a congested safe space in Khan Younis. The shelter coverings sway with breezes, providing no climate control. We wait in line for sustenance and drinks. Power is imaginary and seclusion is unavailable. Optimism seems delicate.

At night, I look up at the celestial bodies through the gaps of my shelter and wonder if my companions see the identical heavens. Some contact me when they are able, expressing they yearn for classes and have retained their old notebooks; like treasures from a lost world. I feel ashamed because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once aspired to pursuing pedagogy to help local youth acquire knowledge, even when life was hard. Now I dream of being a writer – to write, to speak and to demonstrate the world what it represents to be a minor in Gaza. I want to narrate our accounts of anxiety and deprivation, but also bravery. Because even here, amid fatality and debris, our words continue.

When there’s some internet, I attempt learning via the web. On other occasions, I attend a small tent where volunteers educate us mathematics and language. The lessons are short – the electricity cuts out or the airstrikes begin again but in these instances, I sense being. I remember who I was: the student who adored mathematics and poetry, who thought education could transform society.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our homes, educational institutions and relatives. I grieved for my family member, his partner, and their young ones. I lost my cherished hometown, that southern city, which is nothing but rubble now. But the hardest loss of all is education, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

To the world, I express this: keep our hopes alive. We don’t want pity, we want action. Gaza’s children merit literature, educational facilities and safety. Schooling is not an extravagance, it is a fundamental entitlement. Gaza is not just ruins; it is youth who persist in hoping under aerial surveillance at darkness. It is my narrative and I will keep drafting, even if all I have left is a broken pencil and a fragment of ripped sheet.

'Pupils inquire: "Are you alright, educator?"'.

An educator, forty, instructor in central Gaza

I have been teaching in the region for a substantial period. Initially in that urban area, then in a different town, and now in this refugee settlement in the heart of the region. Before the war started, I used to teach six classes of about fourty pupils per class, nearly 240 young minds keen on education.

Teaching them was my mission and happiness in reality, and I still recollect the twinkle in a learner's look when a knowledge was acquired; the kind of moment every educator lives for.

I always thought learning should be dynamic. My teaching space was a zone of amusement, creativity, and movement. We created cartographic art, dramatized bygone episodes, and turned lessons into stories.

Laughter always occupied the area as inquisitiveness displaced anxiety. Certainly, even in earlier times, local youth were always frightened. My learning environment was a secure location but after 7 October, the situation transformed.

My educational institution became a shelter for families running from the explosives. Soon, it was attacked and entirely ruined. There are very few schools still erect in this area now. For this period, nothing has been normal. The hostilities has destroyed every facet of our existence: protection, dwellings, schools, dreams. Anxiety and sorrow are perpetual experiences.

Numerous of my students are now deceased – children who spoke of aspiring to be physicians, painters, and educators. They were denied even the right to exist. Those who survive endure malnutrition, displacement and weariness – and yet, they still maintain the will to learn.

Occasionally, when the connectivity permits, I get in touch with a handful of them. They write asking: “Are you safe, educator?” We communicate short messages, short lessons, tiny sparks of interaction amid the turmoil. They question if things will ever revert to standard. I state to them I am uncertain.

Across Gaza, educators, volunteers and non-profits attempt instruction in all available spaces: in tents, destroyed learning spaces, or crowded shelters. Schooling has become an act of defiance, a way to declare: “We persist.” And so long as we keep acquiring knowledge, we will endure.

A significant number of us are also parents. I am a parent of {three|several