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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

Juwayriya Adwan, 12, a temporary shelter

It has been two years since I was last inside a learning environment. That long since I listened to the morning bell at my former school, took my seat and raised my hand during my favourite class. At times I still distinctly recollect the familiar scents and noises: writing residue, sharpener leftovers, joyful sounds in corridors. But my learning place was destroyed; it was bombed shortly after the conflict started. My learning materials incinerated, and several classmates lost.

I was in the fifth year on the seventh of October: the concluding day I went to school. That morning, alert signals sounded through the halls. Some children cried, others clasped palms firmly. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even her voice trembled. I remember longing for a routine day; lessons, recess, a literary performance. Instead, that day signaled the conclusion 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 live with my guardians, siblings and female sibling in a packed refuge in al-Mawasi. The tent walls flap in the wind, providing no climate control. We queue for water and food. Energy access is fantasy and seclusion is unavailable. Optimism seems delicate.

At darkness, I gaze toward the stars through the gaps of my shelter and wonder if my companions see the same sky. Some message me when they can, stating they yearn for classes and have preserved their previous journals; like relics of a vanished time. I feel ashamed because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once aspired to pursuing pedagogy to help Gaza’s children acquire knowledge, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I hope for being a reporter – to draft, to talk and to show the world what it represents to be a minor in this region. I want to narrate our accounts of anxiety and deprivation, but also fortitude. Because even in this place, amid loss and destruction, our words continue.

When connectivity is available, I attempt learning online. Other times, I go to a modest shelter where helpers educate us mathematics and language. The instruction is limited – the energy supply stops or the bombing resumes but in these instances, I experience vitality. I recall who I was: the student who adored mathematics and poetry, who thought learning could change the world.

Hostilities have stolen countless aspects; our dwellings, schools and kin. I mourned my paternal relative, his spouse, and their offspring. I lost my beloved urban area, my previous home, which is merely debris now. But the hardest loss of all is education, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the global audience, I state this: don’t let our dreams die. We seek no sympathy, we require steps. Gaza’s children deserve literature, learning environments and safety. Schooling is not optional, it is a fundamental entitlement. This region is not only destruction; it is children who continue to aspire beneath the drones at night. It is my account and I will persist in composing, even if all I have left is a damaged writing tool and a scrap of damaged material.

'Pupils inquire: "Are you alright, educator?"'.

Naglaa Weshah, forty, teacher in al-Bureij camp

I have been instructing in Gaza for over ten years. First in Khan Younis, then in another location, and now in al-Bureij camp in the central Gaza Strip. In pre-conflict times, I regularly instructed six classes of about dozens of learners, hundreds of eager students eager to learn.

Educating them was my vocation and delight in existence, and I still recollect the gleam in a learner's look when a knowledge was acquired; the type of instance every educator cherishes.

I always believed instruction should be dynamic. My classroom was a zone of amusement, creativity, and motion. We created cartographic art, acted out historical events, and turned lessons into stories.

Merriment always filled the room as interest substituted anxiety. Yes, even in earlier times, children in Gaza were always frightened. My learning environment was a protected zone but after that day, everything changed.

My learning center became a refuge for families fleeing the aerial attacks. Shortly after, it was attacked and totally demolished. There are hardly any learning institutions left standing in this area now. For this period, nothing has been normal. The war has shattered every part of our reality: security, dwellings, schools, aspirations. Apprehension and mourning are ever-present realities.

A significant number of my learners are now dead – minors who spoke of becoming doctors, painters, and teachers. They were denied even the entitlement to survival. Those who remain live with hunger, eviction and fatigue – and nevertheless, they still maintain the desire for education.

Sometimes, when the online access enables, I hear from a handful of them. They write asking: “How are you, teacher?” We communicate short messages, miniature instruction, small glimmers of interaction amid the chaos. They ask if situations will ever go back to normal. I inform them I am uncertain.

Across Gaza, teachers, volunteers and charities try to teach in all available spaces: in temporary structures, destroyed learning spaces, or packed refuges. Learning has become an demonstration of perseverance, a way to declare: “We persist.” And provided that we keep acquiring knowledge, we will remain.

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