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'Our plea is for action, not compassion'.

Juwayriya Adwan, twelve, al-Mawasi

For the past two years since I was last inside a learning environment. That long since I heard the morning bell at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, took my seat and answered questions during my beloved lesson. Sometimes I still clearly recall the auditory and olfactory sensations: powder from the board, pencil shavings, joyful sounds in corridors. But my learning place was destroyed; it was struck not long after the war began. My textbooks turned to ash, and some of my friends killed.

I was in the fifth year on 7 October: the last day I went to school. That early hours, warning alarms sounded through the corridors. Some students wept, others held hands tightly. Our instructor sought to soothe, but even her voice trembled. I remember longing for a routine day; lessons, intermission, a verse presentation. Instead, that day became the last page of my old life.

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

Now I live with my mother and father, two brothers and female sibling in a crowded shelter in al-Mawasi. The tent walls sway with breezes, providing no climate control. We line up for water and food. Energy access is fantasy and seclusion is unavailable. Aspiration appears brittle.

At night, I look up at the celestial bodies through the holes of my shelter and wonder if my peers see the comparable vista. Some message me when they are able, expressing they yearn for classes and have retained their previous journals; like relics of a vanished time. I feel ashamed because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once envisioned becoming a teacher to support local youth learn, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I aim for being a reporter – to write, to communicate and to demonstrate the world what it represents to be a minor in Gaza. I want to narrate our accounts of fear and hunger, but also bravery. Because even amid these conditions, amid loss and destruction, our expressions persist.

When there’s some internet, I try to study digitally. Sometimes, I go to a tiny space where aid workers educate us math and Arabic. The lessons are short – the electricity cuts out or the airstrikes begin again but in such times, I feel alive. I remember who I was: the student who loved numbers and poems, who thought knowledge could alter reality.

The war has taken so much; our dwellings, educational institutions and relatives. I grieved for my family member, his wife, and their children. I lost my beloved urban area, that southern city, which is merely debris now. But the most painful deprivation of all is learning, because without it, our prospects disappear.

To the international community, I state this: keep our hopes alive. We seek no sympathy, we require steps. The youth are entitled to books, schools and safety. Education is not optional, it is a essential privilege. The territory is not just ruins; it is minors who continue to aspire beneath the drones at darkness. It is my narrative and I will keep drafting, even if the sole items remaining is a broken pencil and a scrap of damaged material.

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

An educator, forty, teacher in a refugee camp

I have been instructing in the region for over ten years. First in that urban area, then in Deir al-Balah, and presently in the central camp in the heart of the region. Before the war started, I regularly instructed multiple groups of about dozens of learners, hundreds of eager students enthusiastic about knowledge.

Instructing them was my mission and happiness in life, and I still recollect the sparkle in a student’s eyes when a knowledge was acquired; the sort of occasion every teacher lives for.

I always thought education should be full of life. My teaching space was a zone of recreation, creativity, and activity. We painted maps, dramatized bygone episodes, and converted teaching into tales.

Laughter always occupied the area as inquisitiveness substituted anxiety. Certainly, even prior to conflict, children in Gaza were always scared. My learning environment was a protected zone but after 7 October, the situation transformed.

My learning center became a shelter for relatives running from the aerial attacks. Soon, it was struck and totally demolished. There are very few schools still erect in this area now. For this period, everything has been abnormal. The hostilities has destroyed every aspect of our existence: safety, residences, learning places, aspirations. Apprehension and mourning are ever-present realities.

Many of my learners are now dead – children who mentioned dreaming of physicians, creatives, and educators. They were deprived even the privilege of living. Those who remain endure starvation, relocation and exhaustion – and however, they still cling to the desire for education.

At times, when the connectivity allows, I hear from a few of them. They write asking: “How are you, instructor?” We communicate short messages, short lessons, tiny sparks of connection amid the turmoil. They ask if situations will ever return to usual. I state to them I have no answer.

Across this territory, educators, volunteers and non-profits try to teach in all available spaces: in temporary structures, destroyed learning spaces, or packed refuges. Education has become an gesture of resistance, a way to declare: “We are still here.” And so long as we keep acquiring knowledge, we will persist.

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