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'We seek action, not sympathy'.

A young student, twelve, Khan Younis

It has been two years since I was last inside a real classroom. That long since I heard the morning bell at the institution I attended, occupied my place and participated actively during my preferred subject. Sometimes I still vividly remember the auditory and olfactory sensations: powder from the board, pencil shavings, cheerful echoes. But my educational institution is gone; it was bombed shortly after the conflict started. My learning materials incinerated, and companions perished.

I was in elementary level on 7 October: the final day I entered the school building. That beginning of the day, warning alarms sounded through the halls. Some children cried, others clasped palms firmly. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even her voice trembled. I remember wishing for a ordinary day; instruction, intermission, a literary performance. Instead, that day signaled the conclusion of my former reality.

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

Now I dwell alongside my mother and father, two brothers and sister in a packed refuge in this coastal area. The tent walls flap in the wind, failing to insulate. We wait in line for sustenance and drinks. Electricity is a dream and personal space is absent. Hope feels fragile.

At evening, I gaze toward the stars through the openings of my temporary home and wonder if my peers see the identical heavens. Some message me when they can, stating they long for education and have kept their old notebooks; like treasures from a lost world. I feel guilty because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once dreamed of pursuing pedagogy to assist local youth learn, even when life was hard. Now I dream of being a writer – to draft, to speak and to reveal the world what it signifies to be a child in the Strip. I want to narrate our accounts of apprehension and need, but also fortitude. Because even amid these conditions, amid death and ruins, our expressions persist.

When there’s some internet, I endeavor to educate myself digitally. Other times, I visit a tiny space 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 recollect who I was: the student who loved numbers and poems, who believed education could transform society.

The war has taken so much; our residences, learning centers and families. I mourned my uncle, his spouse, and their offspring. I forfeited my cherished hometown, that southern city, which is merely debris now. But the most painful deprivation of all is learning, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the global audience, I express this: preserve our aspirations. We don’t want pity, we demand measures. Gaza’s children merit books, schools and safety. Schooling is not a luxury, it is a basic right. Gaza is not only destruction; it is minors who continue to aspire amid unmanned aircraft at darkness. It is my account and I will continue writing, even if my only possessions is a broken pencil and a fragment of ripped sheet.

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

Naglaa Weshah, forty, instructor in al-Bureij camp

I have been educating in Gaza for more than a decade. Initially in a southern city, then in Deir al-Balah, and now in the central camp in the middle of the territory. In pre-conflict times, I typically educated several sets of about fourty pupils per class, nearly 240 young minds eager to learn.

Instructing them was my mission and happiness in life, and I still remember the gleam in a student’s eyes when a new idea clicked; the type of instance every instructor strives for.

I always thought instruction should be full of life. My learning environment was a space of amusement, art, and movement. We created cartographic art, performed past occurrences, and turned lessons into stories.

Merriment always occupied the area as inquisitiveness substituted anxiety. Certainly, even before the war, children in Gaza were always frightened. My teaching space was a secure location but after the seventh, all was altered.

My school became a safe haven for relatives running from the aerial attacks. Not long later, it was attacked and entirely ruined. There are very few schools remaining intact in this area now. For two years, all has been unusual. The conflict has shattered every facet of our reality: protection, residences, learning places, dreams. Fear and grief are ever-present realities.

Numerous of my pupils are now lost – youth who talked about dreaming of medical professionals, artists, and teachers. They were deprived even the privilege of living. Those who are still here endure malnutrition, displacement and exhaustion – and nevertheless, they still cling to the desire for education.

Occasionally, when the online access permits, I hear from a handful of them. They contact questioning: “How are you, teacher?” We communicate concise phrases, abbreviated teaching, small glimmers of contact amid the turmoil. They inquire if circumstances will ever go back to normal. I tell them I don’t know.

All over Gaza, educators, aid workers and non-profits attempt instruction wherever possible: in tents, ruined educational areas, or crowded shelters. Schooling has become an act of defiance, a way to declare: “We are still here.” And provided that we keep acquiring knowledge, we will remain.

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