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'We seek action, not sympathy'.

Juwayriya Adwan, 12, a temporary shelter

It has been 24 months since I entered a real classroom. Two years since I listened to the morning bell at my former school, occupied my place and participated actively during my beloved lesson. Occasionally I still clearly recall the auditory and olfactory sensations: powder from the board, pencil shavings, laughter echoing down the halls. But my educational institution is gone; it was struck soon after the hostilities erupted. My learning materials incinerated, and some of my friends killed.

I was in the fifth year on that fateful day: the final day I attended classes. That beginning of the day, air raid sirens screamed through the halls. Some pupils sobbed, others held hands tightly. Our instructor sought to soothe, but even her voice trembled. I remember wishing for a normal day; lessons, intermission, a verse presentation. Instead, that day signaled the conclusion of my former reality.

The war has taken so much. But the hardest loss of all is learning, because without it, our prospects disappear.

Now I live with my guardians, two brothers and female sibling in a congested safe space in this coastal area. The tent walls sway with breezes, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We wait in line for sustenance and drinks. Power is imaginary and personal space is absent. Optimism seems delicate.

At evening, I look up at the stars through the gaps of my shelter and ponder if my friends see the same sky. Some message me when they can, saying they miss school and have retained their former exercise books; like relics of a vanished time. I feel guilty because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once aspired to entering the education field to support Gaza’s children acquire knowledge, even when life was hard. Now I dream of being a reporter – to write, to speak and to demonstrate the world what it represents to be a young person in this region. I want to tell our stories of anxiety and deprivation, but also fortitude. Because even in this place, amid death and ruins, our voices refuse to be silent.

When there’s some internet, I try to study online. On other occasions, I go to a modest shelter where helpers teach us mathematics and language. The sessions are brief – the power fails or the airstrikes begin again but in those moments, I experience vitality. I remember who I was: the young woman who cherished arithmetic and verse, who was convinced learning could change the world.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our homes, learning centers and relatives. I mourned my family member, his wife, and their offspring. I lost my cherished hometown, Rafah, which is merely debris now. But the toughest sacrifice of all is education, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the global audience, I say this: don’t let our dreams die. We don’t want pity, we want action. Gaza’s children are entitled to literature, schools and security. Schooling is not an extravagance, it is a fundamental entitlement. Gaza is not only destruction; it is children who continue to aspire under aerial surveillance at night. It is my story and I will keep drafting, even if my only possessions is a fractured utensil and a scrap of damaged material.

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

An educator, forty, teacher in al-Bureij camp

I have been instructing in Gaza for more than a decade. Initially in a southern city, then in Deir al-Balah, and currently in al-Bureij camp in the central Gaza Strip. Before the war started, I used to teach several sets of about dozens of learners, nearly 240 young minds keen on education.

Teaching them was my mission and happiness in life, and I still recollect the gleam in a pupil's gaze when a concept was understood; the kind of moment every educator strives for.

I always thought education should be vibrant. My learning environment was a area of play, aesthetics, and activity. We designed geographical illustrations, dramatized bygone episodes, and turned lessons into stories.

Laughter always occupied the area as curiosity displaced anxiety. Yes, even before the war, children in Gaza were always frightened. My classroom was a secure location but after that day, everything changed.

My educational institution became a shelter for households running from the explosives. Not long later, it was struck and completely destroyed. There are very few learning institutions still erect in Gaza now. For two years, all has been unusual. The conflict has destroyed every aspect of our reality: safety, dwellings, learning places, hopes. Apprehension and mourning are ever-present realities.

Numerous of my learners are now dead – children who mentioned aspiring to be doctors, creatives, and instructors. They were deprived even the privilege of living. Those who are still here experience hunger, displacement and fatigue – and nevertheless, they still hold onto the will to learn.

Occasionally, when the online access enables, I receive messages from a few of them. They contact questioning: “Are you OK, educator?” We exchange concise phrases, short lessons, minor flashes of interaction amid the disorder. They question if circumstances will ever return to usual. I state to them I am uncertain.

Across the region, educators, aid workers and charities try to teach in any feasible location: in shelters, damaged classrooms, or packed refuges. Learning has become an act of defiance, a way to say: “We persist.” And provided that we continue learning, we will remain.

Many of us are also parents. I am a parent of {three|several