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'We seek action, not sympathy'.

A young student, 12, a temporary shelter

It has been two years since I entered a learning environment. That long since I heard the start-of-class signal at my former school, took my seat and answered questions during my preferred subject. Occasionally I still distinctly recollect the auditory and olfactory sensations: writing residue, wooden scraps, joyful sounds in corridors. But my learning place was destroyed; it was bombed shortly after the conflict started. My books were burned, and companions perished.

I was in the fifth year on 7 October: the concluding day I went to school. That morning, alert signals sounded through the corridors. Some students wept, others gripped each other. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even her voice trembled. I remember longing for a ordinary day; teaching, break time, a poem recital. Instead, that day became the last page of my previous existence.

Conflict has stolen countless things. But the toughest sacrifice of all is education, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

Now I live with my parents, siblings and sister in a crowded shelter in Khan Younis. The shelter coverings sway with breezes, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We line up for nourishment and hydration. Power is imaginary and personal space is absent. Optimism seems delicate.

At night, I look up at the celestial bodies through the holes of my shelter and question if my peers see the same sky. Some contact me when they can, saying they yearn for classes and have retained their old notebooks; like treasures from a lost world. I feel guilty because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once aspired to becoming a teacher to help Gaza’s children study, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I dream of being a journalist – to write, to speak and to demonstrate the world what it represents to be a child in Gaza. I want to narrate our accounts of apprehension and need, but also courage. Because even in this place, amid fatality and debris, our words continue.

When online access exists, I attempt learning digitally. On other occasions, I go to a tiny space where aid workers teach us math and Arabic. The sessions are brief – the electricity cuts out or the bombing resumes but in such times, I experience vitality. I remember who I was: the student who adored mathematics and poetry, who was convinced education could transform society.

The war has taken so much; our residences, educational institutions and kin. I grieved for my paternal relative, his wife, and their young ones. I lost my beloved urban area, that southern city, which is only ruins 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: preserve our aspirations. Compassion isn't enough, we want action. The youth deserve literature, educational facilities and security. Schooling is not a luxury, it is a essential privilege. Gaza is not just ruins; it is children who continue to aspire beneath the drones at night. It is my account and I will continue writing, even if my only possessions is a broken pencil and a piece of torn paper.

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

Naglaa Weshah, forty, instructor in central Gaza

I have been teaching in Gaza for more than a decade. Originally in that urban area, then in another location, and now in the central camp in the central Gaza Strip. Prior to hostilities, I typically educated multiple groups of about fourty pupils per class, almost two hundred forty individuals eager to learn.

Teaching them was my purpose and joy in existence, and I still recall the twinkle in a learner's look when a concept was understood; the type of instance every teacher strives for.

I always was convinced instruction should be vibrant. My teaching space was a zone of amusement, creativity, and motion. We designed geographical illustrations, dramatized bygone episodes, and converted teaching into tales.

Joy always occupied the area as inquisitiveness displaced fear. Certainly, even before the war, young residents were always frightened. My teaching space was a place of safety but after the seventh, everything changed.

My educational institution became a refuge for families fleeing the explosives. Shortly after, it was struck and completely destroyed. There are almost no educational facilities left standing in the region now. For this period, everything has been abnormal. The war has shattered every facet of our reality: safety, dwellings, learning places, dreams. Apprehension and mourning are perpetual experiences.

A significant number of my learners are now deceased – children who mentioned becoming doctors, creatives, and instructors. They were denied even the entitlement to survival. Those who remain endure starvation, eviction and exhaustion – and yet, they still hold onto the thirst for knowledge.

At times, when the online access permits, I hear from a few of them. They contact inquiring: “How are you, educator?” We share short messages, short lessons, minor flashes of contact amid the turmoil. They question if circumstances will ever go back to normal. I inform them I don’t know.

Across this territory, educators, aid workers and non-profits try to teach in all available spaces: in shelters, damaged classrooms, or crowded shelters. Learning has become an demonstration of perseverance, a way to say: “We are still here.” And as long as we continue learning, we will persist.

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