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'Our plea is for action, not compassion'.

Juwayriya Adwan, 12, Khan Younis

For the past 24 months since I stepped into a proper school. Two years since I heard the school chime at the institution I attended, occupied my place and raised my hand during my preferred subject. At times I still clearly recall the auditory and olfactory sensations: chalk dust, wooden scraps, laughter echoing down the halls. But my learning place was destroyed; it was struck shortly after the hostilities erupted. My learning materials incinerated, and several classmates lost.

I was in elementary level on that fateful day: the final day I went to school. That beginning of the day, alert signals blared through the passageways. Some pupils sobbed, others clasped palms firmly. Our instructor sought to soothe, but even her tone wavered. I remember longing for a routine day; teaching, break time, a poem recital. Instead, that day marked the end of my former reality.

Hostilities have claimed innumerable aspects. But the toughest sacrifice of all is schooling, because without it, our prospects disappear.

Now I live with my mother and father, siblings and female sibling in a crowded shelter in Khan Younis. The tent walls sway with breezes, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We line up for water and food. Energy access is fantasy and seclusion is unavailable. Aspiration appears brittle.

At darkness, I gaze toward the stars through the gaps of my shelter and wonder if my friends see the same sky. Some reach out when they manage, stating they miss school and have retained their previous journals; like relics of a vanished time. I feel remorseful because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once aspired to becoming a teacher to help Gaza’s children study, even when life was hard. Now I aim for being a reporter – to write, to speak and to reveal the world what it means to be a minor in the Strip. I want to narrate our accounts of fear and hunger, but also courage. Because even amid these conditions, amid death and ruins, our words continue.

When online access exists, I endeavor to educate myself online. On other occasions, I attend a modest shelter where helpers educate us mathematics and language. The lessons are short – the electricity cuts out or the airstrikes begin again but in these instances, I experience vitality. I recollect who I was: the young woman who cherished arithmetic and verse, who believed knowledge could alter reality.

The war has taken so much; our dwellings, schools and relatives. I grieved for my paternal relative, his spouse, and their children. I lost my cherished hometown, that southern city, which is only ruins now. But the toughest sacrifice of all is education, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the international community, I express this: don’t let our dreams die. We don’t want pity, we demand measures. Gaza’s children deserve texts, schools and security. Learning is not a luxury, it is a essential privilege. Gaza is not only destruction; it is youth who persist in hoping under aerial surveillance at darkness. It is my narrative and I will keep drafting, even if all I have left is a damaged writing tool and a piece of torn paper.

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

An educator, 40, teacher in a refugee camp

I have been teaching in Gaza for over ten years. Originally in Khan Younis, then in another location, and presently in al-Bureij camp in the heart of the region. In pre-conflict times, I typically educated several sets of about fourty pupils per class, almost two hundred forty individuals keen on education.

Teaching them was my vocation and delight in life, and I still recall the gleam in a student’s eyes when a new idea clicked; the type of instance every teacher strives for.

I always was convinced instruction should be vibrant. My classroom was a space of play, art, and motion. We created cartographic art, performed past occurrences, and turned lessons into stories.

Joy always occupied the area as inquisitiveness replaced fear. Certainly, even before the war, children in Gaza were always scared. My learning environment was a place of safety but after the seventh, all was altered.

My learning center became a shelter for families escaping the aerial attacks. Not long later, it was struck and totally demolished. There are very few schools left standing in the region now. For two years, nothing has been normal. The conflict has broken every part of our reality: protection, dwellings, schools, aspirations. Anxiety and sorrow are ever-present realities.

A significant number of my learners are now deceased – children who spoke of aspiring to be medical professionals, creatives, and instructors. They were denied even the entitlement to survival. Those who survive live with starvation, displacement and fatigue – and nevertheless, they still hold onto the desire for education.

Sometimes, when the connectivity enables, I receive messages from a few of them. They message asking: “How are you, educator?” We exchange concise phrases, short lessons, tiny sparks of connection amid the turmoil. They ask if circumstances will ever revert to standard. I state to them I have no answer.

All over the region, instructors, volunteers and charities try to teach in all available spaces: in tents, ruined educational areas, or congested safe zones. Schooling has become an act of defiance, a way to declare: “Our presence continues.” And as long as we persist in education, we will remain.

Numerous of us are also parents. I am a mother of {three|several