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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

A young student, 12, Khan Younis

It has been two years since I was last inside a learning environment. That long since I listened to the start-of-class signal at my former school, took my seat and answered questions during my favourite class. At times I still vividly remember the familiar scents and noises: chalk dust, sharpener leftovers, laughter echoing down the halls. But my school no longer exists; it was bombed not long after the war began. My books were burned, and some of my friends killed.

I was in fifth grade on that fateful day: the concluding day I went to school. That early hours, warning alarms screamed through the corridors. Some pupils sobbed, others held hands tightly. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even she sounded shaky. I remember longing for a normal day; teaching, break time, a poem recital. Instead, that day signaled the conclusion of my former reality.

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

Now I dwell alongside my mother and father, siblings and female sibling in a congested safe space in this coastal area. The shelter coverings move with air currents, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We wait in line for water and food. Electricity is a dream and seclusion is unavailable. Aspiration appears brittle.

At darkness, I gaze toward the night lights through the openings of my tent and question if my companions see the comparable vista. Some reach out when they can, expressing they miss school and have preserved their former exercise books; like treasures from a lost world. I feel ashamed because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once aspired to becoming a teacher to assist local youth learn, even when existence was challenging. Now I aim for being a reporter – to write, to talk and to reveal the world what it signifies to be a young person in the Strip. I want to narrate our accounts of fear and hunger, but also bravery. Because even amid these conditions, amid fatality and debris, our expressions persist.

When there’s some internet, I endeavor to educate myself online. On other occasions, I visit a modest shelter where aid workers instruct us math and Arabic. The lessons are short – 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 cherished arithmetic and verse, who was convinced knowledge could alter reality.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our homes, educational institutions and kin. I grieved for my paternal relative, his partner, and their young ones. I said goodbye to my cherished hometown, that southern city, which is merely debris now. But the most painful deprivation of all is schooling, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

To the global audience, I say this: don’t let our dreams die. We seek no sympathy, we require steps. Young residents are entitled to texts, educational facilities and protection. Education is not a luxury, it is a essential privilege. The territory is not just ruins; it is youth who continue to aspire beneath the drones at night. It is my account and I will continue writing, even if the sole items remaining is a broken pencil and a scrap of damaged material.

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

Naglaa Weshah, 40, teacher in al-Bureij camp

I have been teaching in this area for more than a decade. Initially in Khan Younis, then in another location, and currently in this refugee settlement in the heart of the region. In pre-conflict times, I typically educated several sets of about fourty pupils per class, nearly 240 young minds keen on education.

Educating them was my vocation and delight in existence, and I still recall the gleam in a pupil's gaze when a concept was understood; the type of instance every instructor lives for.

I always thought learning should be vibrant. My classroom was a zone of play, creativity, and activity. We painted maps, dramatized bygone episodes, and converted teaching into tales.

Joy always occupied the area as curiosity displaced fear. Indeed, even before the war, children in Gaza were always frightened. My teaching space was a secure location but after that day, the situation transformed.

My school became a shelter for families running from the explosives. Shortly after, it was struck and totally demolished. There are hardly any educational facilities remaining intact in the region now. For 24 months, everything has been abnormal. The hostilities has destroyed every facet of our lives: security, dwellings, learning places, dreams. Fear and grief are constant companions.

Many of my learners are now dead – children who talked about dreaming of medical professionals, artists, and teachers. They were denied even the entitlement to survival. Those who remain live with hunger, eviction and fatigue – and yet, they still maintain the will to learn.

Sometimes, when the online access permits, I get in touch with a small number of them. They write questioning: “Are you safe, teacher?” We exchange concise phrases, short lessons, tiny sparks of connection amid the turmoil. They ask if situations will ever go back to normal. I inform them I have no answer.

All over this territory, instructors, aid workers and organizations attempt instruction in any feasible location: in temporary structures, ruined educational areas, or congested safe zones. Learning has become an gesture of resistance, a way to declare: “We persist.” And provided that we keep acquiring knowledge, we will persist.

Many of us are also guardians. I am a mother of {three|several