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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

Juwayriya Adwan, twelve, Khan Younis

For the past two years since I entered a learning environment. Two years since I heard the start-of-class signal at my former school, sat at my desk and raised my hand during my beloved lesson. Occasionally I still clearly recall the auditory and olfactory sensations: chalk dust, wooden scraps, joyful sounds in corridors. But my educational institution is gone; it was bombed soon after the war began. My books were burned, and several classmates lost.

I was in elementary level on 7 October: the final day I entered the school building. That early hours, alert signals sounded through the corridors. Some children cried, others clasped palms firmly. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even her tone wavered. I remember wishing for a ordinary day; instruction, intermission, a literary performance. Instead, that day marked the end of my old life.

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 guardians, male relatives and sister in a congested safe space in this coastal area. 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. Optimism seems delicate.

At night, I observe the stars through the gaps of my shelter and question if my peers see the same sky. Some message me when they manage, saying they miss school and have preserved their previous journals; like relics of a vanished time. I feel remorseful because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once dreamed of entering the education field to help local youth study, even when existence was challenging. Now I hope for being a journalist – to write, to talk and to show the world what it signifies to be a child in this region. I want to share our experiences of apprehension and need, but also bravery. Because even amid these conditions, amid fatality and debris, our voices refuse to be silent.

When there’s some internet, I endeavor to educate myself online. Sometimes, I attend a modest shelter where aid workers educate us arithmetic and Arabic. The instruction is limited – the power fails or the bombing resumes but in such times, I experience vitality. I recall who I was: the student who cherished arithmetic and verse, who was convinced education could transform society.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our residences, educational institutions and relatives. I mourned my family member, his partner, and their children. I forfeited my beloved urban area, Rafah, which is merely debris now. But the hardest loss of all is education, because without it, our prospects disappear.

To the global audience, I express this: preserve our aspirations. We seek no sympathy, we require steps. The youth merit texts, educational facilities and safety. Education is not optional, it is a essential privilege. Gaza is not merely devastation; it is children who persist in hoping beneath the drones at evening. It is my story and I will keep drafting, even if my only possessions is a fractured utensil and a scrap of damaged material.

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

An educator, forty, instructor in central Gaza

I have been teaching in this area for more than a decade. Initially in that urban area, then in Deir al-Balah, and presently in al-Bureij camp in the heart of the region. Before the war started, I typically educated several sets of about dozens of learners, hundreds of eager students eager to learn.

Teaching them was my mission and happiness in reality, and I still remember the twinkle in a pupil's gaze when a new idea clicked; the sort of occasion every instructor lives for.

I always believed instruction should be full of life. My learning environment was a zone of amusement, aesthetics, and activity. We created cartographic art, dramatized bygone episodes, and converted teaching into tales.

Laughter always occupied the area as curiosity displaced anxiety. Certainly, even in earlier times, children in Gaza were always scared. My learning environment was a place of safety but after the seventh, the situation transformed.

My school became a safe haven for families fleeing the explosives. Shortly after, it was attacked and totally demolished. There are almost no learning institutions left standing in the region now. For two years, everything has been abnormal. The hostilities has shattered every aspect of our reality: safety, homes, learning places, dreams. Fear and grief are perpetual experiences.

Numerous of my pupils are now dead – children who spoke of dreaming of doctors, painters, and educators. They were deprived even the entitlement to survival. Those who survive live with starvation, displacement and exhaustion – and however, they still cling to the desire for education.

Sometimes, when the internet enables, I hear from a small number of them. They message asking: “How are you, educator?” We share concise phrases, miniature instruction, small glimmers of connection amid the chaos. They question if things will ever go back to normal. I state to them I don’t know.

Across Gaza, educators, aid workers and non-profits try to teach wherever possible: in tents, damaged classrooms, or packed refuges. Schooling has become an demonstration of perseverance, a way to declare: “We persist.” And provided that we persist in education, we will persist.

A significant number of us are also guardians. I am a mother of {three|several