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'Our plea is for action, not compassion'.

Juwayriya Adwan, 12, a temporary shelter

For the past 24 months since I stepped into a proper school. Two years since I listened to the morning bell at the institution I attended, took my seat and answered questions during my favourite class. Sometimes I still vividly remember the auditory and olfactory sensations: writing residue, pencil shavings, laughter echoing down the halls. But my educational institution is gone; it was struck shortly after the hostilities erupted. My learning materials incinerated, and companions perished.

I was in elementary level on the seventh of October: the concluding day I went to school. That early hours, warning alarms sounded through the halls. Some students wept, others gripped each other. Our educator attempted reassurance, but even she sounded shaky. I remember wishing for a routine day; lessons, break time, a literary performance. Instead, that day marked the end of my old life.

Hostilities have claimed innumerable aspects. But the most painful deprivation of all is schooling, because that is the loss of the future itself.

Now I reside with my mother and father, siblings and sister in a congested safe space in Khan Younis. The temporary partitions move with air currents, failing to insulate. We line up for nourishment and hydration. Electricity is a dream and seclusion is unavailable. Aspiration appears brittle.

At evening, I observe the celestial bodies through the gaps of my temporary home and wonder if my companions see the identical heavens. Some message me when they are able, saying they yearn for classes and have retained their old notebooks; like treasures from a lost world. I feel ashamed because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once aspired to pursuing pedagogy to help Gaza’s children learn, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I aim for being a writer – to draft, to communicate and to demonstrate the world what it signifies to be a minor in the Strip. I want to tell our stories of fear and hunger, but also courage. Because even amid these conditions, amid death and ruins, our words continue.

When there’s some internet, I attempt learning via the web. Other times, I go to a modest shelter where helpers educate us mathematics and language. The sessions are brief – the energy supply stops or the airstrikes begin again but in these instances, I experience vitality. I remember who I was: the student who adored mathematics and poetry, who believed learning could change the world.

Hostilities have stolen countless aspects; our dwellings, schools and kin. I mourned my paternal relative, his wife, and their children. I forfeited my cherished hometown, my previous home, which is nothing but rubble now. But the most painful deprivation of all is schooling, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the international community, I say this: preserve our aspirations. We don’t want pity, we want action. The youth are entitled to books, learning environments and safety. Learning is not an extravagance, it is a essential privilege. This region is not just ruins; it is youth who continue to aspire amid unmanned aircraft at evening. It is my narrative and I will persist in composing, even if all I have left is a fractured utensil and a fragment of ripped sheet.

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

An educator, forty, teacher in central Gaza

I have been instructing in Gaza for more than a decade. Initially in a southern city, then in another location, and now in this refugee settlement in the heart of the region. Before the war started, I regularly instructed multiple groups of about fourty pupils per class, hundreds of eager students eager to learn.

Educating them was my vocation and delight in existence, and I still recollect the twinkle in a pupil's gaze when a new idea clicked; the sort of occasion every instructor strives for.

I always thought education should be dynamic. My learning environment was a zone of recreation, art, and motion. We painted maps, dramatized bygone episodes, and turned lessons into stories.

Merriment always permeated the space as curiosity displaced apprehension. Indeed, even before the war, local youth were always frightened. My learning environment was a protected zone but after that day, everything changed.

My educational institution became a safe haven for households running from the bombs. Not long later, it was targeted and totally demolished. There are hardly any learning institutions left standing in the region now. For this period, all has been unusual. The conflict has shattered every aspect of our existence: safety, homes, learning places, dreams. Anxiety and sorrow are constant companions.

A significant number of my pupils are now lost – youth who mentioned dreaming of doctors, artists, and teachers. They were denied even the entitlement to survival. Those who remain endure starvation, displacement and weariness – and however, they still maintain the thirst for knowledge.

Occasionally, when the connectivity enables, I receive messages from a handful of them. They message asking: “Are you OK, educator?” We communicate short messages, abbreviated teaching, tiny sparks of connection amid the chaos. They ask if things will ever return to usual. I tell them I am uncertain.

All over Gaza, teachers, volunteers and charities try to teach in any feasible location: in temporary structures, ruined educational areas, or congested safe zones. Schooling has become an gesture of resistance, a way to express: “We persist.” And provided that we persist in education, we will persist.

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