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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

A young student, twelve, Khan Younis

It has been two years since I entered a proper school. That long since I heard the morning bell at my former school, sat at my desk and participated actively during my preferred subject. Occasionally I still distinctly recollect the sounds and smells: chalk dust, wooden scraps, laughter echoing down the halls. But my educational institution is gone; it was struck not long after the conflict started. My learning materials incinerated, and several classmates lost.

I was in the fifth year on 7 October: the concluding day I went to school. That morning, air raid sirens screamed through the passageways. Some children cried, others clasped palms firmly. Our instructor sought to soothe, but even she sounded shaky. I remember wishing for a routine day; lessons, recess, a verse presentation. Instead, that day signaled the conclusion of my old life.

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

Now I dwell alongside my guardians, two brothers and sister in a congested safe space in Khan Younis. The temporary partitions flap in the wind, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We queue for water and food. Power is imaginary and seclusion is unavailable. Optimism seems delicate.

At darkness, I look up at the stars through the openings of my tent and wonder if my peers see the identical heavens. Some contact me when they are able, saying they miss school and have kept their old notebooks; like treasures from a lost world. I feel guilty because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once aspired to entering the education field to support young residents study, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I dream of being a reporter – to draft, to communicate and to reveal the world what it means to be a minor in Gaza. I want to narrate our accounts of apprehension and need, but also fortitude. Because even here, amid fatality and debris, our words continue.

When connectivity is available, I try to study digitally. Other times, I go to a modest shelter where volunteers instruct us mathematics and language. The lessons are short – the electricity cuts out or the bombing resumes but in these instances, I experience vitality. I recall who I was: the girl who loved numbers and poems, who thought education could transform society.

Hostilities have stolen countless aspects; our dwellings, educational institutions and relatives. I lost my family member, his spouse, and their offspring. I forfeited 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 world, I state this: keep our hopes alive. We don’t want pity, we want action. The youth are entitled to literature, schools and protection. Learning is not a luxury, it is a basic right. Gaza is not only destruction; it is children who continue to aspire under aerial surveillance at darkness. It is my account and I will keep drafting, even if the sole items remaining is a damaged writing tool and a fragment of ripped sheet.

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

Naglaa Weshah, 40, instructor in al-Bureij camp

I have been teaching in the region for a substantial period. Originally in that urban area, then in Deir al-Balah, and currently in this refugee settlement in the central Gaza Strip. Before the war started, I regularly instructed several sets of about dozens of learners, almost two hundred forty individuals eager to learn.

Educating them was my purpose and joy in existence, and I still remember the gleam in a student’s eyes when a concept was understood; the kind of moment every instructor lives for.

I always believed learning should be full of life. My learning environment was a zone of recreation, creativity, and motion. We designed geographical illustrations, dramatized bygone episodes, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Laughter always occupied the area as curiosity replaced apprehension. Certainly, even in earlier times, local youth were always frightened. My teaching space was a place of safety but after 7 October, all was altered.

My learning center became a refuge for households running from the bombs. Not long later, it was attacked and completely destroyed. There are hardly any schools still erect in this area now. For two years, all has been unusual. The conflict has broken every facet of our reality: protection, homes, educational centers, aspirations. Anxiety and sorrow are ever-present realities.

Numerous of my students are now deceased – youth who spoke of becoming physicians, creatives, and educators. They were deprived even the entitlement to survival. Those who remain live with malnutrition, relocation and exhaustion – and nevertheless, they still cling to the will to learn.

Occasionally, when the online access enables, I get in touch with a small number of them. They write questioning: “How are you, teacher?” We communicate short messages, short lessons, tiny sparks of contact amid the disorder. They ask if situations will ever revert to standard. I tell them I am uncertain.

All over this territory, educators, volunteers and non-profits endeavor education wherever possible: in shelters, destroyed learning spaces, or packed refuges. Learning has become an act of defiance, a way to express: “Our presence continues.” And as long as we persist in education, we will persist.

Many of us are also caregivers. I am a parent of {three|several