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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

Juwayriya Adwan, 12, Khan Younis

For the past 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, occupied my place and raised my hand during my beloved lesson. Occasionally I still clearly recall the auditory and olfactory sensations: chalk dust, wooden scraps, joyful sounds in corridors. But my educational institution is gone; it was bombed soon after the hostilities erupted. My learning materials incinerated, and some of my friends killed.

I was in elementary level on that fateful day: the last day I went to school. That beginning of the day, warning alarms screamed through the passageways. Some pupils sobbed, others held hands tightly. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even her tone wavered. I remember wishing for a normal day; instruction, intermission, a literary performance. Instead, that day marked the end of my previous existence.

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 mother and father, siblings and sister in a congested safe space in this coastal area. The temporary partitions flap in the wind, providing no climate control. We wait in line for sustenance and drinks. Energy access is fantasy and privacy doesn’t exist. Hope feels fragile.

At night, I look up at the celestial bodies through the gaps of my temporary home and question if my friends see the comparable vista. Some message me when they can, expressing they yearn for classes and have kept their former exercise books; like relics of a vanished time. I feel ashamed because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once aspired to becoming a teacher to assist Gaza’s children study, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I aim for being a reporter – to compose, to talk and to reveal the world what it represents to be a minor in the Strip. I want to tell our stories of apprehension and need, but also fortitude. Because even here, amid death and ruins, our voices refuse to be silent.

When connectivity is available, I attempt learning digitally. Sometimes, I attend a modest shelter where helpers instruct us arithmetic and Arabic. The sessions are brief – the electricity cuts out or the airstrikes begin again but in these instances, I experience vitality. I recall who I was: the student who cherished arithmetic and verse, who was convinced education could transform society.

The war has taken so much; our dwellings, educational institutions and kin. I mourned my family member, his partner, and their young ones. I forfeited my cherished hometown, Rafah, which is nothing but rubble now. But the hardest loss of all is schooling, because without it, our prospects disappear.

To the global audience, I say this: don’t let our dreams die. We don’t want pity, we require steps. Young residents merit literature, educational facilities and protection. Education is not a luxury, it is a fundamental entitlement. This region is not merely devastation; it is youth who persist in hoping amid unmanned aircraft at darkness. It is my narrative and I will keep drafting, even if the sole items remaining is a broken pencil and a piece of torn paper.

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

An educator, forty, instructor in a refugee camp

I have been instructing in the region for a substantial period. Originally in a southern city, then in a different town, and currently in al-Bureij camp in the heart of the region. Prior to hostilities, I used to teach several sets of about dozens of learners, almost two hundred forty individuals keen on education.

Teaching them was my purpose and joy in life, and I still remember the sparkle in a pupil's gaze when a new idea clicked; the sort of occasion every instructor strives for.

I always believed education should be full of life. My learning environment was a area of play, aesthetics, and movement. We created cartographic art, performed past occurrences, and converted teaching into tales.

Laughter always permeated the space as curiosity displaced fear. Indeed, even in earlier times, young residents were always scared. My learning environment was a secure location but after the seventh, everything changed.

My learning center became a shelter for households escaping the aerial attacks. Soon, it was attacked and entirely ruined. There are almost no schools remaining intact in the region now. For this period, all has been unusual. The conflict has shattered every aspect of our existence: security, dwellings, educational centers, dreams. Anxiety and sorrow are ever-present realities.

Numerous of my pupils are now dead – minors who talked about becoming physicians, artists, and instructors. They were refused even the right to exist. Those who are still here live with hunger, eviction and exhaustion – and yet, they still maintain the thirst for knowledge.

Sometimes, when the internet enables, I get in touch with a few of them. They contact asking: “Are you safe, instructor?” We exchange concise phrases, short lessons, small glimmers of contact amid the turmoil. They inquire if things will ever revert to standard. I inform them I don’t know.

All over the region, instructors, aid workers and charities endeavor education in any feasible location: in temporary structures, ruined educational areas, or congested safe zones. Learning has become an gesture of resistance, a way to say: “We are still here.” And as long as we keep acquiring knowledge, we will persist.

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