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'Our plea is for action, not compassion'.

Juwayriya Adwan, 12, al-Mawasi

It has been two years since I stepped into a proper school. Two years since I heard the start-of-class signal at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, took my seat and participated actively during my favourite class. Sometimes I still distinctly recollect the familiar scents and noises: chalk dust, pencil shavings, laughter echoing down the halls. But my school no longer exists; it was bombed shortly after the hostilities erupted. My textbooks turned to ash, and companions perished.

I was in fifth grade on 7 October: the final day I entered the school building. That morning, air raid sirens blared through the passageways. Some children cried, others clasped palms firmly. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even her tone wavered. I remember longing for a normal day; teaching, intermission, a poem recital. Instead, that day became the last page of my previous existence.

The war has taken so much. But the toughest sacrifice of all is education, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

Now I reside with my guardians, two brothers and female sibling in a packed refuge in this coastal area. The shelter coverings sway with breezes, providing no climate control. We wait in line for water and food. Energy access is fantasy and seclusion is unavailable. Aspiration appears brittle.

At night, I gaze toward the night lights through the gaps of my tent and ponder if my peers see the identical heavens. Some reach out when they are able, expressing they yearn for classes and have retained their former exercise books; like treasures from a lost world. I feel remorseful because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once aspired to entering the education field to support young residents learn, even when life was hard. Now I dream of being a writer – to compose, to communicate and to demonstrate the world what it represents to be a child in this region. I want to narrate our accounts of fear and hunger, but also courage. Because even here, amid fatality and debris, our voices refuse to be silent.

When there’s some internet, I try to study via the web. Other times, I go to a small tent where volunteers teach us arithmetic and Arabic. The lessons are short – the power fails or the bombing resumes but in these instances, I experience vitality. I recollect who I was: the student who loved numbers and poems, who thought learning could change the world.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our residences, schools and relatives. I lost my uncle, his partner, and their young ones. I forfeited my beloved urban area, Rafah, which is nothing but rubble now. But the toughest sacrifice of all is schooling, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the world, I say this: preserve our aspirations. We don’t want pity, we require steps. Young residents deserve literature, educational facilities and safety. Schooling is not an extravagance, it is a basic right. This region is not merely devastation; it is youth who persist in hoping amid unmanned aircraft at evening. It is my account and I will persist in composing, even if my only possessions is a damaged writing tool and a fragment of ripped sheet.

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

An educator, forty, instructor in central Gaza

I have been instructing in the region for a substantial period. Initially in a southern city, then in Deir al-Balah, and currently in this refugee settlement in the central Gaza Strip. Prior to hostilities, I used to teach several sets of about fourty pupils per class, almost two hundred forty individuals keen on education.

Educating them was my vocation and delight in life, and I still recall the gleam in a learner's look when a concept was understood; the kind of moment every instructor cherishes.

I always was convinced education should be full of life. My classroom was a space of amusement, aesthetics, and movement. We created cartographic art, dramatized bygone episodes, and converted teaching into tales.

Joy always occupied the area as interest replaced anxiety. Indeed, even prior to conflict, young residents were always afraid. My teaching space was a protected zone but after the seventh, the situation transformed.

My educational institution became a refuge for families running from the bombs. Not long later, it was attacked and entirely ruined. There are almost no learning institutions remaining intact in this area now. For two years, nothing has been normal. The war has shattered every aspect of our existence: security, homes, schools, hopes. Apprehension and mourning are perpetual experiences.

A significant number of my students are now deceased – minors who spoke of dreaming of medical professionals, creatives, and educators. They were denied even the entitlement to survival. Those who are still here experience starvation, displacement and weariness – and however, they still hold onto the will to learn.

Occasionally, when the internet permits, I get in touch with a few of them. They message asking: “Are you safe, teacher?” We share brief words, abbreviated teaching, small glimmers of interaction amid the disorder. They ask if situations will ever revert to standard. I inform them I have no answer.

Throughout Gaza, instructors, aid workers and non-profits attempt instruction wherever possible: in tents, damaged classrooms, or crowded shelters. Learning has become an gesture of resistance, a way to express: “We persist.” And as long as we keep acquiring knowledge, we will persist.

Numerous of us are also parents. I am a guardian of {three|several