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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

Juwayriya Adwan, twelve, al-Mawasi

For the past 24 months since I entered a proper school. Two years since I heard the school chime at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, occupied my place and answered questions during my beloved lesson. At times I still distinctly recollect the sounds and smells: powder from the board, pencil shavings, cheerful echoes. But my educational institution is gone; it was struck soon after the conflict started. My books were burned, and companions perished.

I was in elementary level on that fateful day: the last day I attended classes. That morning, warning alarms screamed through the passageways. Some pupils sobbed, others gripped each other. Our educator attempted reassurance, but even her tone wavered. I remember wishing for a ordinary day; instruction, break time, a poem recital. Instead, that day marked the end of my old life.

The war has taken so much. But the hardest loss of all is learning, because that is the loss of the future itself.

Now I dwell alongside my mother and father, male relatives and female sibling in a crowded shelter in this coastal area. The shelter coverings flap in the wind, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We queue for water and food. Electricity is a dream and personal space is absent. Hope feels fragile.

At darkness, I observe the celestial bodies through the openings of my shelter and question if my companions see the comparable vista. Some message me when they are able, stating they long for education and have preserved their old notebooks; like relics of a vanished time. I feel guilty because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once dreamed of becoming a teacher to help Gaza’s children study, even when life was hard. Now I hope for being a journalist – to draft, to communicate and to demonstrate the world what it signifies to be a young person in the Strip. I want to tell our stories of anxiety and deprivation, but also bravery. Because even amid these conditions, amid death and ruins, our expressions persist.

When connectivity is available, I attempt learning via the web. Other times, I attend a small tent where aid workers instruct us arithmetic and Arabic. The lessons are short – the energy supply stops or the bombing resumes but in those moments, I sense being. I recollect who I was: the girl who cherished arithmetic and verse, who believed education could transform society.

Hostilities have stolen countless aspects; our dwellings, learning centers and relatives. I lost my paternal relative, his spouse, and their offspring. I forfeited my cherished hometown, Rafah, which is only ruins now. But the most painful deprivation of all is schooling, because without it, our prospects disappear.

To the international community, I say this: preserve our aspirations. We seek no sympathy, we demand measures. Young residents merit books, schools and security. Learning is not an extravagance, it is a essential privilege. Gaza is not only destruction; it is youth who persist in hoping beneath the drones at evening. It is my narrative and I will continue writing, even if all I have left is a broken pencil and a fragment of ripped sheet.

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

Naglaa Weshah, 40, teacher in central Gaza

I have been teaching in this area for more than a decade. Originally in Khan Younis, then in another location, and currently in the central camp in the central Gaza Strip. In pre-conflict times, I regularly instructed several sets of about dozens of learners, almost two hundred forty individuals eager to learn.

Instructing them was my mission and happiness in existence, and I still recall the sparkle in a learner's look when a new idea clicked; the kind of moment every educator strives for.

I always believed education should be full of life. My teaching space was a space of recreation, creativity, and movement. We created cartographic art, performed past occurrences, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Laughter always occupied the area as inquisitiveness displaced anxiety. Certainly, even before the war, children in Gaza were always frightened. My classroom was a protected zone but after the seventh, everything changed.

My school became a shelter for households fleeing the explosives. Not long later, it was targeted and entirely ruined. There are very few educational facilities still erect in this area now. For 24 months, all has been unusual. The war has destroyed every facet of our existence: security, homes, learning places, hopes. Apprehension and mourning are constant companions.

Numerous of my students are now lost – children who mentioned aspiring to be medical professionals, creatives, and instructors. They were refused even the right to exist. Those who are still here live with starvation, eviction and exhaustion – and nevertheless, they still hold onto the desire for education.

Sometimes, when the connectivity enables, I get in touch with a handful of them. They message questioning: “How are you, educator?” We share concise phrases, abbreviated teaching, small glimmers of interaction amid the disorder. They ask if circumstances will ever go back to normal. I state to them I don’t know.

Across Gaza, instructors, volunteers and charities attempt instruction in all available spaces: in temporary structures, damaged classrooms, or packed refuges. Learning has become an gesture of resistance, a way to say: “We persist.” And as long as we keep acquiring knowledge, we will remain.

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