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'We seek action, not sympathy'.

A young student, twelve, Khan Younis

For the past two years since I was last inside a learning environment. That long since I heard the start-of-class signal at my former school, took my seat and answered questions during my favourite class. Sometimes I still clearly recall the auditory and olfactory sensations: powder from the board, wooden scraps, cheerful echoes. But my learning place was destroyed; it was bombed soon after the conflict started. My books were burned, and several classmates lost.

I was in fifth grade on that fateful day: the final day I went to school. That beginning of the day, air raid sirens sounded through the passageways. Some students wept, others gripped each other. Our instructor sought to soothe, but even she sounded shaky. I remember longing for a ordinary day; teaching, break time, a verse presentation. Instead, that day marked the end of my former reality.

Hostilities have claimed innumerable aspects. But the most painful deprivation of all is education, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

Now I live with my parents, male relatives and female sibling in a crowded shelter in al-Mawasi. The temporary partitions sway with breezes, failing to insulate. We queue for sustenance and drinks. Energy access is fantasy and personal space is absent. Hope feels fragile.

At darkness, I gaze toward the celestial bodies through the openings of my temporary home and wonder if my friends see the comparable vista. Some message me when they manage, expressing they long for education and have kept their former exercise books; like valuables from a bygone era. I feel ashamed because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once envisioned becoming a teacher to support young residents learn, even when existence was challenging. Now I aim for being a writer – to draft, to talk and to demonstrate the world what it signifies to be a minor in Gaza. I want to narrate our accounts of anxiety and deprivation, but also fortitude. Because even amid these conditions, amid loss and destruction, our expressions persist.

When there’s some internet, I try to study online. Sometimes, I go to a tiny space where helpers instruct us arithmetic and Arabic. The instruction is limited – the electricity cuts out or the airstrikes begin again but in those moments, I experience vitality. I remember who I was: the young woman who cherished arithmetic and verse, who thought knowledge could alter reality.

Hostilities have stolen countless aspects; our dwellings, educational institutions and families. I mourned my paternal relative, his partner, and their children. I lost my cherished hometown, that southern city, which is merely debris now. But the most painful deprivation of all is education, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

To the global audience, I state this: don’t let our dreams die. We seek no sympathy, we demand measures. Gaza’s children deserve books, learning environments and safety. Education is not optional, it is a essential privilege. The territory is not only destruction; it is minors who still dream under aerial surveillance at evening. It is my narrative and I will keep drafting, even if the sole items remaining is a damaged writing tool and a piece of torn paper.

'They message: "are you OK, teacher?"'.

An educator, 40, instructor in al-Bureij camp

I have been teaching in this area for over ten years. First in that urban area, then in Deir al-Balah, and presently in the central camp in the central Gaza Strip. In pre-conflict times, I regularly instructed several sets of about fourty pupils per class, nearly 240 young minds keen on education.

Educating them was my purpose and joy in life, and I still recall the twinkle in a learner's look when a knowledge was acquired; the sort of occasion every instructor cherishes.

I always was convinced instruction should be full of life. My classroom was a area of amusement, creativity, and movement. We created cartographic art, dramatized bygone episodes, and converted teaching into tales.

Laughter always occupied the area as inquisitiveness substituted fear. Certainly, even before the war, children in Gaza were always scared. My learning environment was a secure location but after the seventh, the situation transformed.

My school became a shelter for relatives escaping the aerial attacks. Shortly after, it was struck and entirely ruined. There are hardly any learning institutions still erect in Gaza now. For this period, everything has been abnormal. The conflict has destroyed every facet of our existence: safety, homes, learning places, dreams. Anxiety and sorrow are ever-present realities.

Many of my students are now dead – children who talked about aspiring to be physicians, artists, and teachers. They were deprived even the entitlement to survival. Those who survive experience malnutrition, displacement and weariness – and yet, they still cling to the thirst for knowledge.

Occasionally, when the online access enables, I hear from a handful of them. They contact inquiring: “Are you OK, teacher?” We share brief words, short lessons, small glimmers of connection amid the chaos. They question if things will ever revert to standard. I state to them I am uncertain.

All over the region, instructors, helpers and organizations attempt instruction in any feasible location: in tents, damaged classrooms, or crowded shelters. Learning has become an act of defiance, a way to express: “We are still here.” And provided that we keep acquiring knowledge, we will endure.

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