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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

A young student, twelve, al-Mawasi

For the past 24 months since I entered a real classroom. That long since I listened to the school chime at the institution I attended, occupied my place and participated actively during my favourite class. Sometimes I still distinctly recollect the familiar scents and noises: writing residue, wooden scraps, cheerful echoes. But my school no longer exists; it was targeted shortly after the hostilities erupted. My books were burned, and some of my friends killed.

I was in elementary level on 7 October: the last day I went to school. That beginning of the day, air raid sirens screamed through the passageways. Some children cried, others clasped palms firmly. Our instructor sought to soothe, but even her voice trembled. I remember wishing for a routine day; instruction, intermission, a verse presentation. 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 without it, our prospects disappear.

Now I dwell alongside my mother and father, male relatives and female sibling in a crowded shelter in this coastal area. The shelter coverings sway with breezes, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We queue for water and food. Energy access is fantasy and personal space is absent. Hope feels fragile.

At darkness, I gaze toward the night lights through the openings of my temporary home and ponder if my companions see the same sky. Some reach out when they manage, stating they yearn for classes and have retained their old notebooks; like treasures from a lost world. I feel remorseful because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once aspired to entering the education field to help local youth learn, even when life was hard. Now I hope for being a journalist – to draft, to talk and to show the world what it represents to be a minor in this region. I want to narrate our accounts of anxiety and deprivation, but also bravery. Because even in this place, amid loss and destruction, our voices refuse to be silent.

When connectivity is available, I try to study digitally. On other occasions, I attend a tiny space where volunteers educate us math and Arabic. The sessions are brief – the electricity cuts out or the airstrikes begin again but in such times, I sense being. I remember who I was: the young woman who adored mathematics and poetry, who thought knowledge could alter reality.

Hostilities have stolen countless aspects; our dwellings, learning centers and families. I lost my paternal relative, his spouse, and their young ones. I forfeited my beautiful city, my previous home, which is only ruins now. But the most painful deprivation of all is learning, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the world, I state this: preserve our aspirations. Compassion isn't enough, we want action. Young residents are entitled to literature, schools and protection. Learning is not an extravagance, it is a fundamental entitlement. This region is not merely devastation; it is minors 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?"'.

Naglaa Weshah, forty, teacher in a refugee camp

I have been instructing in this area for more than a decade. Originally in a southern city, then in Deir al-Balah, and currently in this refugee settlement in the middle of the territory. In pre-conflict times, I regularly instructed six classes of about fourty pupils per class, almost two hundred forty individuals eager to learn.

Instructing them was my vocation and delight in life, and I still recall the gleam in a pupil's gaze when a knowledge was acquired; the kind of moment every teacher cherishes.

I always believed instruction should be full of life. My learning environment was a zone of play, art, and movement. We designed geographical illustrations, dramatized bygone episodes, and converted teaching into tales.

Joy always occupied the area as curiosity replaced fear. Indeed, even prior to conflict, local youth were always scared. My classroom was a protected zone but after 7 October, everything changed.

My educational institution became a refuge for households fleeing the bombs. Soon, it was attacked and entirely ruined. There are hardly any learning institutions still erect in this area now. For this period, everything has been abnormal. The war has destroyed every facet of our reality: security, residences, schools, hopes. Apprehension and mourning are perpetual experiences.

A significant number of my pupils are now dead – minors who mentioned aspiring to be medical professionals, painters, and educators. They were deprived even the entitlement to survival. Those who remain live with starvation, displacement and fatigue – and nevertheless, they still cling to the will to learn.

Occasionally, when the internet enables, I get in touch with a few of them. They contact inquiring: “Are you safe, instructor?” We share concise phrases, abbreviated teaching, minor flashes of connection amid the chaos. They inquire if circumstances will ever revert to standard. I inform them I don’t know.

Throughout Gaza, instructors, helpers and charities endeavor education in any feasible location: in tents, destroyed learning spaces, or congested safe zones. Learning has become an act of defiance, a way to declare: “We persist.” And so long as we continue learning, we will persist.

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