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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

A young student, twelve, al-Mawasi

It has been 24 months since I was last inside a real classroom. Two years 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 sounds and smells: powder from the board, pencil shavings, laughter echoing down the halls. But my educational institution is gone; it was targeted shortly after the war began. My learning materials incinerated, and several classmates lost.

I was in fifth grade on 7 October: the concluding day I went to school. That morning, air raid sirens blared through the passageways. Some students wept, others clasped palms firmly. Our instructor sought to soothe, but even her voice trembled. I remember longing for a routine day; teaching, intermission, a literary performance. Instead, that day signaled the conclusion of my former reality.

Conflict has stolen countless things. But the toughest sacrifice of all is learning, because that is the loss of the future itself.

Now I live with my guardians, male relatives and female sibling in a packed refuge in Khan Younis. The temporary partitions sway with breezes, providing no climate control. We queue for sustenance and drinks. Power is imaginary and personal space is absent. Optimism seems delicate.

At darkness, I observe the celestial bodies through the openings of my temporary home and ponder if my peers see the same sky. Some message me when they can, expressing they long for education and have preserved their old notebooks; like treasures from a lost world. I feel remorseful because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once aspired to becoming a teacher to help young residents study, even when existence was challenging. Now I dream of being a writer – to write, to talk and to show the world what it represents to be a young person in this region. I want to tell our stories of anxiety and deprivation, but also courage. Because even here, amid death and ruins, our voices refuse to be silent.

When connectivity is available, I try to study digitally. Other times, I go to a modest shelter where aid workers educate us arithmetic and Arabic. The sessions are brief – the electricity cuts out or the bombing resumes but in these instances, I feel alive. I recall who I was: the student who loved numbers and poems, who was convinced education could transform society.

Hostilities have stolen countless aspects; our dwellings, schools and families. I grieved for my uncle, his partner, and their young ones. I forfeited my cherished hometown, my previous home, which is merely debris now. But the toughest sacrifice of all is education, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

To the international community, I say this: preserve our aspirations. We seek no sympathy, we require steps. Gaza’s children are entitled to texts, learning environments and security. Learning is not a luxury, it is a essential privilege. This region is not merely devastation; it is minors who persist in hoping beneath the drones at night. It is my narrative and I will persist in composing, even if all I have left is a damaged writing tool and a fragment of ripped sheet.

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

Naglaa Weshah, 40, instructor in al-Bureij camp

I have been educating in the region for more than a decade. First in that urban area, then in Deir al-Balah, and presently in the central camp in the central Gaza Strip. Prior to hostilities, I used to teach six classes of about 40 students each, nearly 240 young minds keen on education.

Teaching them was my purpose and joy in reality, and I still remember the twinkle in a learner's look when a concept was understood; the kind of moment every instructor lives for.

I always believed education should be vibrant. My teaching space was a area of play, creativity, and activity. We designed geographical illustrations, dramatized bygone episodes, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Joy always permeated the space as curiosity substituted apprehension. Yes, even in earlier times, children in Gaza were always scared. My classroom was a protected zone but after 7 October, the situation transformed.

My learning center became a safe haven for relatives running from the bombs. Shortly after, it was targeted and totally demolished. There are almost no educational facilities still erect in this area now. For this period, all has been unusual. The war has destroyed every facet of our existence: security, residences, educational centers, aspirations. Anxiety and sorrow are perpetual experiences.

A significant number of my pupils are now lost – minors who spoke of aspiring to be doctors, creatives, and instructors. They were refused even the right to exist. Those who remain live with starvation, displacement and exhaustion – and yet, they still maintain the will to learn.

At times, when the internet permits, I hear from a handful of them. They message inquiring: “Are you safe, instructor?” We communicate concise phrases, short lessons, tiny sparks of contact amid the chaos. They ask if situations will ever return to usual. I inform them I am uncertain.

Across Gaza, educators, volunteers and charities attempt instruction wherever possible: in shelters, destroyed learning spaces, or congested safe zones. Schooling has become an gesture of resistance, a way to declare: “We persist.” And provided that we continue learning, we will remain.

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