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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

Juwayriya Adwan, twelve, al-Mawasi

For the past two years since I entered a learning environment. That long since I listened to the school chime at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, sat at my desk and answered questions during my favourite class. At times I still vividly remember the familiar scents and noises: chalk dust, sharpener leftovers, laughter echoing down the halls. But my school no longer exists; it was struck not long after the conflict started. My learning materials incinerated, and several classmates lost.

I was in the fifth year on 7 October: the last day I attended classes. That early hours, air raid sirens sounded through the halls. Some children cried, others gripped each other. Our instructor sought to soothe, but even her voice trembled. I remember longing for a normal day; instruction, recess, a poem recital. Instead, that day marked the end of my previous existence.

The war has taken so much. But the toughest sacrifice of all is education, because without it, our prospects disappear.

Now I dwell alongside my parents, siblings and sister in a crowded shelter in al-Mawasi. The tent walls sway with breezes, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We queue for nourishment and hydration. Electricity is a dream and personal space is absent. Hope feels fragile.

At night, I look up at the celestial bodies through the openings of my shelter and wonder if my friends see the comparable vista. Some message me when they are able, stating they miss school and have preserved their previous journals; like relics of a vanished time. I feel guilty because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once aspired to entering the education field to assist Gaza’s children study, even when life was hard. Now I aim for being a writer – to draft, to communicate and to show the world what it signifies to be a young person in the Strip. I want to narrate our accounts of fear and hunger, but also fortitude. Because even in this place, amid death and ruins, our expressions persist.

When online access exists, I try to study via the web. Other times, I go to a tiny space where aid workers instruct us mathematics and language. The lessons are short – the energy supply stops or the bombing resumes but in such times, I feel alive. I recollect who I was: the girl who cherished arithmetic and verse, who thought learning could change the world.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our dwellings, educational institutions and kin. I mourned my paternal relative, his partner, and their offspring. I forfeited my beloved urban area, Rafah, which is merely debris now. But the most painful deprivation of all is education, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

To the world, I say this: preserve our aspirations. We don’t want pity, we want action. Gaza’s children merit texts, educational facilities and safety. Learning is not a luxury, it is a basic right. The territory is not just ruins; it is children who continue to aspire amid unmanned aircraft at darkness. It is my narrative and I will continue writing, even if my only possessions is a broken pencil and a fragment of ripped sheet.

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

Naglaa Weshah, 40, instructor in al-Bureij camp

I have been instructing in the region for a substantial period. Originally in Khan Younis, then in Deir al-Balah, and now in the central camp in the central Gaza Strip. Before the war started, I regularly instructed six classes of about fourty pupils per class, almost two hundred forty individuals keen on education.

Educating them was my mission and happiness in life, and I still recall the gleam in a pupil's gaze when a concept was understood; the type of instance every instructor cherishes.

I always was convinced instruction should be full of life. My learning environment was a space of recreation, creativity, and motion. We painted maps, performed past occurrences, and converted teaching into tales.

Joy always permeated the space as inquisitiveness replaced anxiety. Indeed, even prior to conflict, children in Gaza were always scared. My classroom was a protected zone but after 7 October, all was altered.

My educational institution became a safe haven for households escaping the explosives. Shortly after, it was targeted and completely destroyed. There are hardly any learning institutions still erect in the region now. For this period, all has been unusual. The war has shattered every facet of our existence: protection, homes, schools, aspirations. Apprehension and mourning are constant companions.

A significant number of my students are now deceased – children who spoke of dreaming of physicians, creatives, and instructors. They were refused even the right to exist. Those who remain experience malnutrition, relocation and weariness – and nevertheless, they still maintain the desire for education.

At times, when the internet allows, I get in touch with a handful of them. They message asking: “Are you safe, educator?” We exchange brief words, miniature instruction, tiny sparks of contact amid the disorder. They inquire if situations will ever revert to standard. I state to them I have no answer.

All over the region, instructors, aid workers and charities endeavor education in any feasible location: in shelters, damaged classrooms, or packed refuges. Schooling has become an gesture of resistance, a way to declare: “We are still here.” And provided that we persist in education, we will persist.

A significant number of us are also parents. I am a parent of {three|several