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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

A young student, 12, al-Mawasi

For the past 24 months since I entered a real classroom. Two years since I listened to the start-of-class signal at the institution I attended, took my seat and answered questions during my favourite class. Sometimes I still vividly remember the sounds and smells: chalk dust, sharpener leftovers, cheerful echoes. But my learning place was destroyed; it was struck shortly after the war began. My textbooks turned to ash, and some of my friends killed.

I was in fifth grade on 7 October: the concluding day I entered the school building. That early hours, warning alarms screamed through the corridors. Some children cried, others clasped palms firmly. Our educator attempted reassurance, but even her tone wavered. I remember wishing for a normal day; teaching, break time, a verse presentation. Instead, that day signaled the conclusion of my previous existence.

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

Now I live with my parents, siblings and female sibling in a congested safe space in al-Mawasi. The temporary partitions sway with breezes, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We line up for sustenance and drinks. Power is imaginary and personal space is absent. Optimism seems delicate.

At darkness, I observe the celestial bodies through the gaps of my temporary home and question if my friends see the comparable vista. Some reach out when they manage, saying they long for education and have retained their old notebooks; like relics of a vanished time. I feel guilty because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once envisioned pursuing pedagogy to assist young residents study, even when existence was challenging. Now I hope for being a writer – to draft, to speak and to demonstrate the world what it means to be a minor in this region. I want to narrate our accounts of apprehension and need, but also fortitude. Because even in this place, amid death and ruins, our expressions persist.

When online access exists, I attempt learning digitally. On other occasions, I attend a tiny space where helpers instruct us math and Arabic. The sessions are brief – the energy supply stops or the airstrikes begin again but in those moments, I sense being. I recollect who I was: the young woman who adored mathematics and poetry, who thought learning could change the world.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our dwellings, schools and relatives. I mourned my paternal relative, his partner, and their offspring. I forfeited my beloved urban area, Rafah, which is merely debris now. But the hardest loss of all is learning, because without it, our prospects disappear.

To the world, I say this: preserve our aspirations. We seek no sympathy, we require steps. Gaza’s children merit books, schools and safety. Schooling is not optional, it is a essential privilege. Gaza is not only destruction; it is youth who still dream amid unmanned aircraft at darkness. It is my story and I will persist in composing, even if the sole items remaining is a broken pencil and a fragment of ripped sheet.

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

An educator, 40, teacher in a refugee camp

I have been teaching in the region for more than a decade. First in Khan Younis, then in another location, and currently in al-Bureij camp in the middle of the territory. Before the war started, I used to teach several sets of about dozens of learners, hundreds of eager students eager to learn.

Educating them was my vocation and delight in reality, and I still remember the gleam in a learner's look when a knowledge was acquired; the sort of occasion every educator cherishes.

I always thought education should be full of life. My teaching space was a area of amusement, creativity, and motion. We designed geographical illustrations, dramatized bygone episodes, and converted teaching into tales.

Merriment always permeated the space as interest replaced anxiety. Yes, even in earlier times, children in Gaza were always scared. My classroom was a place of safety but after the seventh, the situation transformed.

My learning center became a shelter for households fleeing the bombs. Not long later, it was attacked and totally demolished. There are very few educational facilities remaining intact in the region now. For this period, all has been unusual. The conflict has destroyed every aspect of our existence: security, homes, learning places, hopes. Anxiety and sorrow are perpetual experiences.

Many of my learners are now lost – children who spoke of becoming doctors, artists, and educators. They were denied even the privilege of living. Those who remain live with starvation, displacement and weariness – and however, they still maintain the will to learn.

Sometimes, when the connectivity permits, I receive messages from a few of them. They message asking: “Are you OK, educator?” We share short messages, abbreviated teaching, minor flashes of connection amid the turmoil. They ask if circumstances will ever return to usual. I tell them I don’t know.

Across Gaza, educators, volunteers and non-profits try to teach in all available spaces: in shelters, ruined educational areas, or congested safe zones. Learning has become an gesture of resistance, a way to express: “Our presence continues.” And as long as we persist in education, we will endure.

A significant number of us are also caregivers. I am a guardian of {three|several