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'Our plea is for action, not compassion'.

Juwayriya Adwan, 12, al-Mawasi

For the past two years since I was last inside a proper school. Two years since I listened to the morning bell at my former school, sat at my desk and participated actively during my beloved lesson. Occasionally I still clearly recall the auditory and olfactory sensations: powder from the board, sharpener leftovers, laughter echoing down the halls. But my learning place was destroyed; it was bombed soon after the conflict started. My books were burned, and several classmates lost.

I was in the fifth year on 7 October: the final day I attended classes. That early hours, warning alarms blared through the corridors. Some children cried, others gripped each other. Our instructor sought to soothe, but even she sounded shaky. I remember hoping for a routine day; lessons, break time, a poem recital. Instead, that day signaled the conclusion of my old life.

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

Now I dwell alongside my mother and father, male relatives and female sibling in a packed refuge in this coastal area. The temporary partitions sway with breezes, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We queue for water and food. Power is imaginary and personal space is absent. Aspiration appears brittle.

At night, I observe the stars through the holes of my tent and ponder if my peers see the comparable vista. Some contact me when they manage, expressing they miss school and have kept their old notebooks; like relics of a vanished time. I feel remorseful because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once aspired to becoming a teacher to support local youth study, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I dream of being a writer – to write, to communicate and to reveal the world what it represents to be a minor in the Strip. I want to share our experiences of fear and hunger, but also bravery. Because even here, amid death and ruins, our words continue.

When there’s some internet, I endeavor to educate myself online. Sometimes, I visit a modest shelter where aid workers teach us arithmetic and Arabic. The sessions are brief – the electricity cuts out or the attacks recommence but in these instances, I feel alive. I recall who I was: the young woman who loved numbers and poems, who was convinced learning could change the world.

The war has taken so much; our homes, learning centers and families. I grieved for my paternal relative, his partner, and their children. I said goodbye to my beautiful city, Rafah, 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: keep our hopes alive. We don’t want pity, we want action. Young residents merit literature, schools and protection. Learning is not an extravagance, it is a essential privilege. The territory is not just ruins; it is youth who still dream beneath the drones at evening. It is my narrative and I will persist in composing, even if all I have left is a fractured utensil and a scrap of damaged material.

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

An educator, 40, instructor in a refugee camp

I have been instructing in Gaza for more than a decade. Originally in that urban area, then in a different town, and now in this refugee settlement in the central Gaza Strip. Before the war started, I typically educated multiple groups of about fourty pupils per class, almost two hundred forty individuals enthusiastic about knowledge.

Teaching them was my mission and happiness in life, and I still remember the twinkle in a pupil's gaze when a knowledge was acquired; the sort of occasion every instructor lives for.

I always believed learning should be full of life. My learning environment was a space of play, art, and motion. We painted maps, dramatized bygone episodes, and converted teaching into tales.

Joy always permeated the space as interest replaced fear. Certainly, even before the war, children in Gaza were always scared. My learning environment was a place of safety but after 7 October, all was altered.

My school became a refuge for families running from the aerial attacks. Soon, it was struck and totally demolished. There are almost no schools remaining intact in the region now. For two years, nothing has been normal. The conflict has shattered every part of our lives: protection, dwellings, educational centers, dreams. Anxiety and sorrow are constant companions.

Numerous of my learners are now dead – children who spoke of dreaming of doctors, artists, and instructors. They were deprived even the entitlement to survival. Those who are still here endure malnutrition, displacement and weariness – and yet, they still cling to the thirst for knowledge.

Sometimes, when the connectivity enables, I get in touch with a small number of them. They message asking: “How are you, instructor?” We communicate brief words, short lessons, tiny sparks of interaction amid the disorder. They inquire if circumstances will ever return to usual. I tell them I have no answer.

Across the region, teachers, volunteers and non-profits attempt instruction in any feasible location: in temporary structures, ruined educational areas, or packed refuges. Learning has become an gesture of resistance, a way to declare: “We persist.” And so long as we continue learning, we will remain.

Numerous of us are also guardians. I am a guardian of {three|several