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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

A young student, 12, al-Mawasi

For the past 24 months since I was last inside a real classroom. Two years since I listened to the school chime at my former school, sat at my desk and raised my hand during my favourite class. Sometimes I still distinctly recollect the auditory and olfactory sensations: powder from the board, sharpener leftovers, cheerful echoes. But my educational institution is gone; it was bombed shortly after the conflict started. My books were burned, and some of my friends killed.

I was in the fifth year on the seventh of October: the final day I went to school. That beginning of the day, alert signals blared through the passageways. Some students wept, others clasped palms firmly. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even her voice trembled. I remember wishing for a ordinary day; instruction, intermission, a poem recital. Instead, that day marked the end of my old life.

Hostilities have claimed innumerable aspects. But the toughest sacrifice of all is schooling, because without it, our prospects disappear.

Now I reside with my guardians, siblings and female sibling in a crowded shelter in this coastal area. The tent walls flap in the wind, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We wait in line for nourishment and hydration. Power is imaginary and privacy doesn’t exist. Aspiration appears brittle.

At evening, I gaze toward the celestial bodies through the holes of my temporary home and question if my friends see the comparable vista. Some contact me when they are able, stating they long for education and have preserved their previous journals; like treasures from a lost world. I feel ashamed because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once aspired to becoming a teacher to support Gaza’s children study, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I aim for being a writer – to draft, to talk and to reveal the world what it signifies to be a minor in Gaza. I want to narrate our accounts of fear and hunger, but also courage. Because even here, amid death and ruins, our expressions persist.

When there’s some internet, I endeavor to educate myself digitally. Sometimes, I go to a small tent where volunteers teach us arithmetic and Arabic. The instruction is limited – the power fails or the airstrikes begin again but in such times, I feel alive. I recollect who I was: the student who cherished arithmetic and verse, who thought learning could change the world.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our dwellings, schools and families. I mourned my paternal relative, his spouse, and their children. I forfeited my beautiful city, that southern city, which is only ruins now. But the toughest sacrifice of all is learning, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

To the global audience, I express this: preserve our aspirations. Compassion isn't enough, we demand measures. The youth are entitled to texts, learning environments and security. Education is not optional, it is a fundamental entitlement. Gaza is not merely devastation; it is youth who still dream beneath the drones at night. It is my narrative and I will continue writing, even if all I have left is a damaged writing tool and a piece of torn paper.

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

An educator, forty, instructor in central Gaza

I have been teaching in the region for more than a decade. Originally in a southern city, then in another location, and presently in the central camp in the heart of the region. Before the war started, I regularly instructed multiple groups of about 40 students each, nearly 240 young minds keen on education.

Educating them was my vocation and delight in life, and I still remember the twinkle in a learner's look when a concept was understood; the kind of moment every teacher cherishes.

I always thought learning should be full of life. My learning environment was a zone of recreation, art, and motion. We painted maps, dramatized bygone episodes, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Laughter always filled the room as interest substituted fear. Indeed, even before the war, young residents were always frightened. My classroom was a place of safety but after 7 October, the situation transformed.

My learning center became a shelter for families escaping the explosives. Not long later, it was struck and completely destroyed. There are very few learning institutions still erect in the region now. For two years, everything has been abnormal. The conflict has broken every facet of our existence: safety, homes, learning places, dreams. Fear and grief are perpetual experiences.

Numerous of my students are now dead – minors who spoke of becoming doctors, painters, and teachers. They were deprived even the privilege of living. Those who are still here experience hunger, eviction and exhaustion – and however, they still maintain the thirst for knowledge.

Occasionally, when the internet enables, I receive messages from a handful of them. They contact asking: “Are you safe, educator?” We communicate brief words, abbreviated teaching, tiny sparks of connection amid the chaos. They ask if things will ever return to usual. I state to them I don’t know.

Across this territory, instructors, helpers and charities endeavor education in all available spaces: in temporary structures, ruined educational areas, or packed refuges. Schooling has become an act of defiance, a way to declare: “We persist.” And provided that we keep acquiring knowledge, we will persist.

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