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'We seek action, not sympathy'.

Juwayriya Adwan, 12, a temporary shelter

It has been two years since I entered a real classroom. That long since I heard the start-of-class signal at the institution I attended, sat at my desk and answered questions during my preferred subject. Sometimes I still vividly remember the auditory and olfactory sensations: chalk dust, sharpener leftovers, laughter echoing down the halls. But my learning place was destroyed; it was bombed not long after the conflict started. My learning materials incinerated, and companions perished.

I was in elementary level on the seventh of October: the concluding day I went to school. That morning, alert signals screamed through the corridors. Some students wept, others gripped each other. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even her voice trembled. I remember longing for a normal day; teaching, recess, a literary performance. Instead, that day became the last page of my previous existence.

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

Now I live with my parents, two brothers and female sibling in a crowded shelter in al-Mawasi. The temporary partitions flap in the wind, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We line up for water and food. Power is imaginary and seclusion is unavailable. Aspiration appears brittle.

At evening, I look up at the stars through the holes of my temporary home and wonder if my peers see the comparable vista. Some reach out when they can, saying they yearn for classes and have kept their old notebooks; like relics of a vanished time. I feel guilty because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once aspired to becoming a teacher to help local youth learn, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I aim for being a reporter – to write, to talk and to show the world what it represents to be a child in this region. I want to narrate our accounts of anxiety and deprivation, but also fortitude. Because even here, amid death and ruins, our words continue.

When there’s some internet, I try to study online. On other occasions, I go to a small tent where aid workers teach us math and Arabic. The instruction is limited – the electricity cuts out or the bombing resumes but in such times, I feel alive. I remember who I was: the student who cherished arithmetic and verse, who was convinced education could transform society.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our homes, schools and families. I grieved for my family member, his spouse, and their children. I lost my cherished hometown, Rafah, which is nothing but rubble now. But the toughest sacrifice of all is schooling, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

To the world, I state this: don’t let our dreams die. We don’t want pity, we want action. Young residents are entitled to texts, learning environments and safety. Schooling is not a luxury, it is a essential privilege. The territory is not just ruins; it is youth who persist in hoping beneath the drones at night. It is my narrative and I will persist in composing, even if the sole items remaining is a fractured utensil and a fragment of ripped sheet.

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

An educator, 40, instructor in al-Bureij camp

I have been instructing in this area for over ten years. Initially in that urban area, then in Deir al-Balah, and currently in al-Bureij camp in the middle of the territory. In pre-conflict times, I typically educated multiple groups of about dozens of learners, hundreds of eager students eager to learn.

Instructing them was my purpose and joy in reality, and I still recall the twinkle in a learner's look when a concept was understood; the sort of occasion every educator cherishes.

I always believed learning should be full of life. My teaching space was a space of play, aesthetics, and activity. We painted maps, dramatized bygone episodes, and turned lessons into stories.

Laughter always permeated the space as curiosity substituted fear. Yes, even in earlier times, young residents were always frightened. My learning environment was a secure location but after 7 October, all was altered.

My learning center became a refuge for families fleeing the bombs. Not long later, it was struck and totally demolished. There are hardly any learning institutions still erect in Gaza now. For two years, all has been unusual. The hostilities has shattered every facet of our reality: protection, residences, schools, hopes. Fear and grief are constant companions.

Many of my learners are now dead – minors who mentioned becoming doctors, artists, and instructors. They were denied even the right to exist. Those who survive live with malnutrition, displacement and weariness – and however, they still hold onto the desire for education.

Occasionally, when the online access allows, I get in touch with a handful of them. They write inquiring: “How are you, instructor?” We share brief words, abbreviated teaching, small glimmers of connection amid the turmoil. They inquire if things will ever go back to normal. I inform them I am uncertain.

Across the region, educators, aid workers and charities try to teach in any feasible location: in temporary structures, destroyed learning spaces, or crowded shelters. Education has become an gesture of resistance, a way to express: “We persist.” And so long as we keep acquiring knowledge, we will persist.

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