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'We seek action, not sympathy'.

Juwayriya Adwan, 12, al-Mawasi

For the past two years since I was last inside a learning environment. Two years since I listened to the morning bell at my former school, sat at my desk and raised my hand during my preferred subject. Occasionally I still distinctly recollect the auditory and olfactory sensations: powder from the board, pencil shavings, joyful sounds in corridors. But my educational institution is gone; it was targeted soon after the conflict started. My learning materials incinerated, and some of my friends killed.

I was in fifth grade on that fateful day: the last day I went to school. That beginning of the day, warning alarms blared through the halls. Some students wept, others held hands tightly. Our educator attempted reassurance, but even she sounded shaky. I remember longing for a ordinary day; lessons, recess, a verse presentation. Instead, that day marked the end of my former reality.

Hostilities have claimed innumerable aspects. But the hardest loss of all is schooling, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

Now I reside with my guardians, siblings and female sibling in a crowded shelter in al-Mawasi. The shelter coverings flap in the wind, failing to insulate. We wait in line for nourishment and hydration. Power is imaginary and personal space is absent. Optimism seems delicate.

At night, I look up at the stars through the gaps of my tent and question if my companions see the identical heavens. Some contact me when they manage, expressing they miss school and have preserved their former exercise books; like relics of a vanished time. I feel guilty because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once envisioned entering the education field to help local youth acquire knowledge, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I hope for being a writer – to write, to communicate and to show the world what it means to be a young person in Gaza. I want to share our experiences of anxiety and deprivation, but also bravery. Because even amid these conditions, amid death and ruins, our expressions persist.

When connectivity is available, I endeavor to educate myself online. Other times, I attend a small tent where volunteers teach us arithmetic and Arabic. The sessions are brief – the power fails or the airstrikes begin again but in these instances, I sense being. I recall who I was: the girl who adored mathematics and poetry, who thought learning could change the world.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our dwellings, schools and kin. I grieved for my uncle, his spouse, and their young ones. I lost my beloved urban area, that southern city, which is merely debris now. But the most painful deprivation of all is education, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the international community, I express this: don’t let our dreams die. Compassion isn't enough, we demand measures. Gaza’s children merit books, learning environments and protection. Education is not an extravagance, it is a basic right. The territory is not only destruction; it is minors who continue to aspire beneath the drones at darkness. It is my narrative and I will continue writing, even if my only possessions is a fractured utensil and a fragment of ripped sheet.

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

Naglaa Weshah, 40, instructor in central Gaza

I have been educating in this area for a substantial period. First in Khan Younis, then in another location, and presently in al-Bureij camp in the middle of the territory. In pre-conflict times, I used to teach several sets of about 40 students each, nearly 240 young minds enthusiastic about knowledge.

Educating them was my mission and happiness in reality, and I still remember the twinkle in a student’s eyes when a new idea clicked; the type of instance every teacher strives for.

I always believed learning should be vibrant. My teaching space was a zone of play, aesthetics, and motion. We created cartographic art, performed past occurrences, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Merriment always filled the room as inquisitiveness replaced apprehension. Certainly, even in earlier times, local youth were always scared. My teaching space was a protected zone but after the seventh, all was altered.

My educational institution became a safe haven for relatives fleeing the explosives. Shortly after, it was targeted and entirely ruined. There are very few schools remaining intact in the region now. For two years, all has been unusual. The conflict has broken every part of our lives: security, residences, schools, dreams. Apprehension and mourning are perpetual experiences.

Numerous of my students are now lost – minors who talked about dreaming of doctors, artists, and instructors. They were refused even the right to exist. Those who remain live with hunger, relocation and exhaustion – and nevertheless, they still hold onto the will to learn.

Sometimes, when the online access permits, I receive messages from a handful of them. They contact inquiring: “Are you safe, educator?” We exchange short messages, abbreviated teaching, minor flashes of interaction amid the turmoil. They inquire if circumstances will ever return to usual. I inform them I am uncertain.

Across Gaza, educators, helpers and non-profits endeavor education in all available spaces: in shelters, ruined educational areas, or congested safe zones. Education has become an gesture of resistance, a way to say: “We persist.” And so long as we persist in education, we will endure.

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