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'Our plea is for action, not compassion'.

A young student, twelve, Khan Younis

It has been 24 months since I entered a learning environment. Two years since I heard the morning bell at the institution I attended, sat at my desk and participated actively during my preferred subject. At times I still distinctly recollect the sounds and smells: chalk dust, pencil shavings, cheerful echoes. But my school no longer exists; it was bombed not long after the war began. My books were burned, and some of my friends killed.

I was in the fifth year on the seventh of October: the last day I went to school. That beginning of the day, warning alarms sounded through the corridors. Some children cried, others gripped each other. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even her voice trembled. I remember hoping for a normal day; lessons, recess, a literary performance. Instead, that day became the last page of my old life.

The war has taken so much. But the toughest sacrifice of all is learning, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

Now I dwell alongside my guardians, male relatives and female sibling in a packed refuge in this coastal area. The temporary partitions sway with breezes, failing to insulate. We queue for water and food. Power is imaginary and privacy doesn’t exist. Aspiration appears brittle.

At night, I look up at the stars through the openings of my temporary home and wonder if my peers see the identical heavens. Some reach out when they can, expressing they yearn for classes and have retained their former exercise books; like treasures from a lost world. I feel ashamed because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once aspired to pursuing pedagogy to assist Gaza’s children learn, even when existence was challenging. Now I hope for being a journalist – to write, to speak and to demonstrate the world what it signifies to be a child in the Strip. I want to share our experiences of anxiety and deprivation, but also courage. Because even amid these conditions, amid death and ruins, our expressions persist.

When there’s some internet, I try to study online. On other occasions, I visit a tiny space where volunteers teach us mathematics and language. The sessions are brief – the power fails or the airstrikes begin again but in those moments, I sense being. I recall who I was: the girl who adored mathematics and poetry, who was convinced knowledge could alter reality.

The war has taken so much; our dwellings, educational institutions and families. I grieved for my family member, his wife, and their offspring. I said goodbye to my beloved urban area, Rafah, which is nothing but rubble now. But the hardest loss of all is schooling, because without it, our prospects disappear.

To the global audience, I state this: keep our hopes alive. We don’t want pity, we demand measures. The youth merit books, educational facilities and safety. Schooling is not an extravagance, it is a fundamental entitlement. Gaza is not only destruction; it is minors who still dream under aerial surveillance at darkness. It is my narrative and I will continue writing, even if my only possessions is a damaged writing tool and a scrap of damaged material.

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

An educator, forty, teacher in central Gaza

I have been teaching in the region for a substantial period. Originally in Khan Younis, then in another location, and presently in the central camp in the central Gaza Strip. In pre-conflict times, I regularly instructed multiple groups of about dozens of learners, nearly 240 young minds enthusiastic about knowledge.

Teaching them was my purpose and joy in existence, and I still remember the twinkle in a learner's look when a concept was understood; the kind of moment every educator strives for.

I always thought education should be dynamic. My classroom was a area of amusement, creativity, and movement. We created cartographic art, performed past occurrences, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Merriment always occupied the area as curiosity replaced fear. Indeed, even in earlier times, young residents were always scared. My classroom was a place of safety but after the seventh, all was altered.

My school became a safe haven for households fleeing the explosives. Not long later, it was attacked and entirely ruined. There are very few educational facilities left standing in the region now. For 24 months, nothing has been normal. The war has shattered every part of our existence: security, residences, educational centers, aspirations. Fear and grief are constant companions.

Many of my learners are now dead – minors who spoke of dreaming of medical professionals, painters, and educators. They were deprived even the right to exist. Those who survive live with starvation, displacement and weariness – and nevertheless, they still maintain the thirst for knowledge.

At times, when the internet allows, I get in touch with a few of them. They contact questioning: “How are you, teacher?” We communicate concise phrases, short lessons, tiny sparks of contact amid the turmoil. They inquire if things will ever revert to standard. I tell them I have no answer.

All over the region, instructors, helpers and non-profits endeavor education in all available spaces: in shelters, destroyed learning spaces, or crowded shelters. Education has become an gesture of resistance, a way to express: “Our presence continues.” And provided that we persist in education, we will remain.

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