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'Our plea is for action, not compassion'.

Juwayriya Adwan, twelve, Khan Younis

It has been two years since I entered a real classroom. Two years since I listened to the school chime at my former school, occupied my place and participated actively during my beloved lesson. Occasionally I still vividly remember the sounds and smells: chalk dust, sharpener leftovers, laughter echoing down the halls. But my school no longer exists; it was struck shortly after the conflict started. My books were burned, and several classmates lost.

I was in elementary level on that fateful day: the concluding day I went to school. That beginning of the day, warning alarms sounded through the corridors. Some children cried, others held hands tightly. Our educator attempted reassurance, but even her voice trembled. I remember hoping for a normal day; instruction, break time, a poem recital. Instead, that day became the last page of my old life.

Conflict has stolen countless things. But the hardest loss of all is learning, because without it, our prospects disappear.

Now I live with my guardians, siblings and sister in a packed refuge in Khan Younis. The tent walls move with air currents, failing to insulate. We queue for sustenance and drinks. Power is imaginary and privacy doesn’t exist. Hope feels fragile.

At darkness, I look up at the stars through the openings of my shelter and ponder if my peers see the identical heavens. Some reach out when they manage, expressing they long for education and have preserved their previous journals; like valuables from a bygone era. I feel ashamed because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once envisioned becoming a teacher to support local youth acquire knowledge, even when existence was challenging. Now I hope for being a journalist – to draft, to speak and to reveal the world what it represents to be a child in Gaza. I want to narrate our accounts of apprehension and need, but also courage. Because even in this place, amid loss and destruction, our voices refuse to be silent.

When online access exists, I endeavor to educate myself via the web. Sometimes, I attend a tiny space where volunteers teach us mathematics and language. The sessions are brief – the electricity cuts out or the airstrikes begin again but in such times, I feel alive. I recollect who I was: the student who loved numbers and poems, who thought knowledge could alter reality.

Hostilities have stolen countless aspects; our homes, educational institutions and relatives. I mourned my uncle, his partner, and their young ones. I said goodbye to my beloved urban area, that southern city, which is nothing but rubble now. But the toughest sacrifice of all is schooling, because without it, our prospects disappear.

To the international community, I express this: preserve our aspirations. We seek no sympathy, we require steps. Young residents deserve texts, educational facilities and protection. Learning is not a luxury, it is a fundamental entitlement. This region is not merely devastation; it is youth who still dream amid unmanned aircraft at evening. It is my story and I will continue writing, even if my only possessions is a damaged writing tool and a scrap of damaged material.

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

Naglaa Weshah, forty, instructor in central Gaza

I have been instructing in the region for more than a decade. Initially in a southern city, then in a different town, and currently in this refugee settlement in the central Gaza Strip. Before the war started, I typically educated multiple groups of about fourty pupils per class, almost two hundred forty individuals enthusiastic about knowledge.

Teaching them was my mission and happiness in existence, and I still remember the sparkle in a student’s eyes when a knowledge was acquired; the type of instance every educator cherishes.

I always was convinced learning should be dynamic. My learning environment was a zone of play, creativity, and activity. We painted maps, dramatized bygone episodes, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Merriment always permeated the space as inquisitiveness displaced apprehension. Indeed, even prior to conflict, children in Gaza were always afraid. My learning environment was a secure location but after the seventh, the situation transformed.

My school became a safe haven for relatives escaping the aerial attacks. Shortly after, it was struck and completely destroyed. There are almost no schools left standing in the region now. For 24 months, nothing has been normal. The hostilities has destroyed every aspect of our lives: protection, dwellings, schools, dreams. Anxiety and sorrow are ever-present realities.

A significant number of my learners are now dead – minors who spoke of dreaming of physicians, painters, and teachers. They were denied even the privilege of living. Those who survive endure hunger, displacement and weariness – and however, they still maintain the thirst for knowledge.

Occasionally, when the internet permits, I receive messages from a small number of them. They message inquiring: “Are you OK, educator?” We exchange brief words, abbreviated teaching, small glimmers of contact amid the disorder. They inquire if situations will ever return to usual. I inform them I don’t know.

Throughout Gaza, instructors, aid workers and charities attempt instruction wherever possible: in tents, destroyed learning spaces, or crowded shelters. Schooling has become an act of defiance, a way to declare: “We persist.” And as long as we keep acquiring knowledge, we will persist.

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