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'We seek action, not sympathy'.

Juwayriya Adwan, 12, a temporary shelter

For the past 24 months since I was last inside a real classroom. Two years since I heard the morning bell at my former school, sat at my desk and raised my hand during my favourite class. Sometimes I still vividly remember the auditory and olfactory sensations: powder from the board, wooden scraps, cheerful echoes. But my learning place was destroyed; it was targeted soon after the hostilities erupted. My books were burned, and some of my friends killed.

I was in fifth grade on 7 October: the last day I entered the school building. That beginning of the day, warning alarms screamed through the passageways. Some pupils sobbed, others held hands tightly. Our educator attempted reassurance, but even her voice trembled. I remember hoping for a ordinary day; teaching, recess, a literary performance. Instead, that day marked the end of my former reality.

Hostilities have claimed innumerable aspects. But the hardest loss of all is learning, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

Now I reside with my mother and father, two brothers and sister in a packed refuge in al-Mawasi. The tent walls sway with breezes, providing no climate control. We wait in line for water and food. Electricity is a dream and personal space is absent. Aspiration appears brittle.

At darkness, I gaze toward the night lights through the openings of my temporary home and wonder if my peers see the identical heavens. Some contact me when they can, expressing they yearn for classes and have retained their former exercise books; like treasures from a lost world. I feel ashamed because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once aspired to entering the education field to support Gaza’s children acquire knowledge, even when life was hard. Now I aim for being a reporter – to compose, to talk and to demonstrate the world what it represents to be a young person in this region. I want to tell our stories of apprehension and need, but also courage. Because even amid these conditions, amid fatality and debris, our voices refuse to be silent.

When online access exists, I endeavor to educate myself via the web. Sometimes, I visit a modest shelter where aid workers instruct us arithmetic and Arabic. The sessions are brief – the electricity cuts out or the airstrikes begin again but in these instances, I sense being. I recall who I was: the girl who cherished arithmetic and verse, who thought knowledge could alter reality.

Hostilities have stolen countless aspects; our homes, learning centers and relatives. I grieved for my paternal relative, his wife, and their children. I lost my beautiful city, my previous home, which is nothing but rubble now. But the toughest sacrifice of all is learning, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the international community, I express this: don’t let our dreams die. We seek no sympathy, we want action. Gaza’s children are entitled to literature, schools and protection. Education is not a luxury, it is a essential privilege. The territory is not merely devastation; it is youth who persist in hoping amid unmanned aircraft at darkness. It is my narrative and I will persist in composing, even if the sole items remaining is a damaged writing tool and a scrap of damaged material.

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

Naglaa Weshah, forty, instructor in al-Bureij camp

I have been instructing in this area for a substantial period. Originally in Khan Younis, then in another location, and currently in the central camp in the central Gaza Strip. In pre-conflict times, I used to teach several sets of about fourty pupils per class, hundreds of eager students eager to learn.

Educating them was my mission and happiness in reality, and I still recall the twinkle in a learner's look when a concept was understood; the sort of occasion every educator lives for.

I always thought education should be dynamic. My learning environment was a area of amusement, creativity, and motion. We created cartographic art, performed past occurrences, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Laughter always occupied the area as curiosity displaced fear. Yes, even prior to conflict, children in Gaza were always scared. My learning environment was a protected zone but after the seventh, all was altered.

My educational institution became a safe haven for relatives escaping the bombs. Shortly after, it was targeted and entirely ruined. There are very few educational facilities remaining intact in Gaza now. For two years, nothing has been normal. The conflict has broken every part of our reality: protection, residences, educational centers, dreams. Anxiety and sorrow are constant companions.

A significant number of my students are now dead – minors who talked about aspiring to be doctors, creatives, and instructors. They were denied even the right to exist. Those who are still here experience malnutrition, displacement and exhaustion – and yet, they still hold onto the thirst for knowledge.

Sometimes, when the online access allows, I get in touch with a small number of them. They message inquiring: “How are you, teacher?” We share brief words, abbreviated teaching, minor flashes of contact amid the turmoil. They inquire if circumstances will ever revert to standard. I inform them I have no answer.

Throughout Gaza, instructors, volunteers and organizations endeavor education in any feasible location: in tents, ruined educational areas, or crowded shelters. Learning has become an act of defiance, a way to declare: “We persist.” And as long as we continue learning, we will endure.

Numerous of us are also caregivers. I am a mother of {three|several