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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

Juwayriya Adwan, 12, a temporary shelter

It has been two years since I entered a learning environment. Two years since I heard the school chime at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, occupied my place and raised my hand during my preferred subject. Occasionally I still vividly remember the familiar scents and noises: writing residue, sharpener leftovers, laughter echoing down the halls. But my school no longer exists; it was struck soon after the war began. My textbooks turned to ash, and companions perished.

I was in fifth grade on that fateful day: the final day I entered the school building. That early hours, air raid sirens sounded through the halls. Some pupils sobbed, others gripped each other. Our educator attempted reassurance, but even she sounded shaky. I remember hoping for a normal 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 most painful deprivation of all is schooling, because without it, our prospects disappear.

Now I dwell alongside my mother and father, male relatives and female sibling in a crowded shelter in al-Mawasi. The temporary partitions flap in the wind, failing to insulate. We queue for nourishment and hydration. Power is imaginary and seclusion is unavailable. Aspiration appears brittle.

At darkness, I gaze toward the stars through the holes of my temporary home and ponder if my peers see the same sky. Some message me when they are able, saying they miss school and have kept their former exercise books; like treasures from a lost world. I feel remorseful because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once dreamed of entering the education field to help Gaza’s children study, even when existence was challenging. Now I hope for being a writer – to write, to talk and to reveal the world what it means to be a minor in the Strip. I want to share our experiences of apprehension and need, but also courage. Because even here, amid death and ruins, our voices refuse to be silent.

When online access exists, I endeavor to educate myself via the web. On other occasions, I attend a modest shelter where helpers educate us math and Arabic. The lessons are short – the electricity cuts out or the bombing resumes but in these instances, I feel alive. I remember who I was: the girl who cherished arithmetic and verse, who was convinced education could transform society.

Hostilities have stolen countless aspects; our dwellings, learning centers and kin. I grieved for my uncle, his wife, and their children. I lost my beautiful city, that southern city, which is merely debris now. But the hardest loss of all is education, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the international community, I state this: keep our hopes alive. We seek no sympathy, we demand measures. The youth are entitled to literature, schools and safety. Learning is not optional, it is a fundamental entitlement. The territory is not merely devastation; it is minors who still dream amid unmanned aircraft at night. It is my story and I will keep drafting, even if all I have left is a fractured utensil and a fragment of ripped sheet.

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

Naglaa Weshah, forty, instructor in al-Bureij camp

I have been instructing in this area for more than a decade. Originally 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 fourty pupils per class, nearly 240 young minds enthusiastic about knowledge.

Teaching them was my purpose and joy in life, and I still recollect the gleam in a student’s eyes when a concept was understood; the type of instance every teacher strives for.

I always was convinced education should be full of life. My classroom was a area of recreation, creativity, and movement. We created cartographic art, acted out historical events, and turned lessons into stories.

Merriment always filled the room as curiosity substituted fear. Indeed, even in earlier times, young residents were always scared. My teaching space was a protected zone but after the seventh, the situation transformed.

My school became a refuge for households running from the aerial attacks. Shortly after, it was targeted and totally demolished. There are hardly any learning institutions left standing in Gaza now. For two years, nothing has been normal. The war has broken every facet of our reality: security, dwellings, learning places, aspirations. Fear and grief are perpetual experiences.

A significant number of my learners are now lost – minors who talked about becoming medical professionals, painters, and educators. They were deprived even the privilege of living. Those who survive endure starvation, displacement and weariness – and nevertheless, they still maintain the will to learn.

Occasionally, when the connectivity permits, I get in touch with a small number of them. They write asking: “Are you OK, teacher?” We share brief words, short lessons, small glimmers of contact amid the turmoil. They inquire if things will ever return to usual. I state to them I am uncertain.

Across the region, instructors, volunteers and charities endeavor education in any feasible location: in temporary structures, ruined educational areas, or congested safe zones. Education has become an gesture of resistance, a way to express: “Our presence continues.” And as long as we persist in education, we will remain.

Many of us are also guardians. I am a mother of {three|several