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'Our plea is for action, not compassion'.

A young student, 12, a temporary shelter

For the past two years since I stepped into a real classroom. Two years since I heard the school chime at my former school, took my seat and raised my hand during my preferred subject. Sometimes I still distinctly recollect the auditory and olfactory sensations: writing residue, sharpener leftovers, laughter echoing down the halls. But my learning place was destroyed; it was targeted not long after the war began. My textbooks turned to ash, and several classmates lost.

I was in the fifth year on 7 October: the final day I went to school. That early hours, air raid sirens screamed through the passageways. Some students wept, others clasped palms firmly. Our educator attempted reassurance, but even her tone wavered. I remember wishing for a routine day; teaching, break time, a verse presentation. Instead, that day signaled the conclusion of my former reality.

Conflict has stolen countless things. But the most painful deprivation of all is schooling, because that is the loss of the future itself.

Now I reside with my parents, male relatives and female sibling in a packed refuge in Khan Younis. The tent walls sway with breezes, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We wait in line for water and food. Electricity is a dream and personal space is absent. Hope feels fragile.

At evening, I gaze toward the stars through the openings of my temporary home and ponder if my peers see the comparable vista. Some contact me when they are able, stating they long for education and have preserved their old notebooks; like relics of a vanished time. I feel remorseful because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once aspired to becoming a teacher to assist Gaza’s children study, even when existence was challenging. Now I hope for being a journalist – to draft, to communicate and to demonstrate the world what it means to be a young person in the Strip. I want to share our experiences of anxiety and deprivation, but also bravery. Because even here, amid death and ruins, our words continue.

When connectivity is available, I attempt learning via the web. On other occasions, I go to a modest shelter where helpers teach us mathematics and language. The sessions are brief – the energy supply stops or the airstrikes begin again but in those moments, I sense being. 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, learning centers and kin. I grieved for my paternal relative, his spouse, and their young ones. I lost my beloved urban area, that southern city, which is nothing but rubble now. But the hardest loss of all is education, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

To the world, I express this: don’t let our dreams die. We seek no sympathy, we demand measures. The youth are entitled to literature, schools and protection. Schooling is not an extravagance, it is a essential privilege. Gaza is not only destruction; it is youth who continue to aspire beneath the drones at evening. It is my account and I will keep drafting, 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, 40, instructor in central Gaza

I have been instructing in Gaza for more than a decade. Originally in a southern city, then in a different town, and currently in this refugee settlement in the central Gaza Strip. In pre-conflict times, I typically educated six classes of about 40 students each, hundreds of eager students enthusiastic about knowledge.

Instructing them was my vocation and delight in reality, and I still recollect the gleam in a student’s eyes when a new idea clicked; the type of instance every educator cherishes.

I always believed learning should be dynamic. My learning environment was a zone of play, aesthetics, and movement. We created cartographic art, dramatized bygone episodes, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Joy always occupied the area as curiosity substituted anxiety. Yes, even in earlier times, children in Gaza were always scared. My classroom was a secure location but after the seventh, everything changed.

My school became a safe haven for families escaping the bombs. Not long later, it was attacked and completely destroyed. There are very few learning institutions remaining intact in the region now. For this period, everything has been abnormal. The conflict has shattered every part of our existence: safety, residences, learning places, aspirations. Fear and grief are constant companions.

A significant number of my learners are now dead – minors who talked about aspiring to be doctors, creatives, and educators. They were denied even the entitlement to survival. Those who survive endure malnutrition, displacement and exhaustion – and nevertheless, they still cling to the thirst for knowledge.

Sometimes, when the connectivity enables, I hear from a small number of them. They message inquiring: “Are you safe, teacher?” We communicate concise phrases, miniature instruction, small glimmers of interaction amid the turmoil. They ask if circumstances will ever go back to normal. I state to them I am uncertain.

Across this territory, educators, volunteers and charities try to teach in any feasible location: in temporary structures, destroyed learning spaces, or packed refuges. Schooling has become an gesture of resistance, a way to say: “Our presence continues.” And provided that we keep acquiring knowledge, we will persist.

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