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'We seek action, not sympathy'.

Juwayriya Adwan, twelve, Khan Younis

For the past 24 months since I stepped into a proper school. Two years since I heard the start-of-class signal at the institution I attended, took my seat and participated actively during my preferred subject. At times I still clearly recall the sounds and smells: chalk dust, sharpener leftovers, laughter echoing down the halls. But my educational institution is gone; it was targeted not long after the conflict started. My books were burned, and some of my friends killed.

I was in the fifth year on 7 October: the concluding day I attended classes. That beginning of the day, warning alarms screamed through the halls. Some students wept, others gripped each other. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even she sounded shaky. I remember longing for a normal day; instruction, recess, a literary performance. Instead, that day signaled the conclusion of my former reality.

The war has taken so much. But the toughest sacrifice of all is schooling, because that is the loss of the future itself.

Now I live with my mother and father, two brothers and sister in a packed refuge in al-Mawasi. The temporary partitions move with air currents, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We line up for water and food. Power is imaginary and privacy doesn’t exist. Optimism seems delicate.

At darkness, I look up at the stars through the gaps of my shelter and ponder if my peers see the identical heavens. Some message me when they are able, stating they yearn for classes and have kept their former exercise books; like relics of a vanished time. I feel guilty because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once dreamed of pursuing pedagogy to assist Gaza’s children acquire knowledge, even when life was hard. Now I dream of being a journalist – to write, to talk and to show the world what it means to be a young person in Gaza. I want to tell our stories of anxiety and deprivation, but also bravery. Because even amid these conditions, amid fatality and debris, our voices refuse to be silent.

When online access exists, I attempt learning digitally. Other times, I visit a modest shelter where aid workers teach us mathematics and language. The lessons are short – the power fails or the airstrikes begin again but in those moments, I sense being. I recollect who I was: the student who loved numbers and poems, who thought knowledge could alter reality.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our homes, educational institutions and kin. I lost my paternal relative, his spouse, and their offspring. I said goodbye to my beloved urban area, my previous home, which is nothing but rubble now. But the most painful deprivation of all is learning, because without it, our prospects disappear.

To the global audience, I state this: don’t let our dreams die. We don’t want pity, we require steps. The youth merit texts, schools and safety. Learning is not a luxury, it is a basic right. Gaza is not only destruction; it is minors who continue to aspire beneath the drones at darkness. It is my account and I will keep drafting, even if my only possessions is a damaged writing tool and a scrap of damaged material.

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

An educator, forty, teacher in al-Bureij camp

I have been teaching in Gaza for more than a decade. Originally 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 used to teach several sets of about dozens of learners, almost two hundred forty individuals eager to learn.

Educating them was my mission and happiness in existence, and I still remember the sparkle in a pupil's gaze when a knowledge was acquired; the type of instance every educator lives for.

I always believed education should be vibrant. My teaching space was a space of recreation, creativity, and movement. We created cartographic art, dramatized bygone episodes, and converted teaching into tales.

Laughter always permeated the space as inquisitiveness displaced anxiety. Indeed, even before the war, young residents were always scared. My teaching space was a place of safety but after the seventh, everything changed.

My learning center became a safe haven for families fleeing the bombs. Soon, it was attacked and completely destroyed. There are almost no schools still erect in this area now. For this period, all has been unusual. The conflict has destroyed every part of our lives: security, homes, educational centers, hopes. Apprehension and mourning are perpetual experiences.

Numerous of my learners are now lost – youth who talked about aspiring to be medical professionals, painters, and teachers. They were denied even the right to exist. Those who are still here endure hunger, displacement and weariness – and nevertheless, they still cling to the desire for education.

Occasionally, when the online access enables, I hear from a handful of them. They write inquiring: “Are you safe, instructor?” We communicate brief words, abbreviated teaching, small glimmers of connection amid the turmoil. They inquire if things will ever return to usual. I state to them I don’t know.

Throughout the region, instructors, helpers and organizations try to teach wherever possible: in tents, damaged classrooms, or packed refuges. Schooling has become an act of defiance, a way to declare: “Our presence continues.” And so long as we continue learning, we will endure.

Numerous of us are also caregivers. I am a mother of {three|several