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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

A young student, twelve, Khan Younis

For the past 24 months since I stepped into a real classroom. Two years since I heard the morning bell at my former school, sat at my desk and participated actively during my beloved lesson. Sometimes I still clearly recall the auditory and olfactory sensations: writing residue, sharpener leftovers, joyful sounds in corridors. But my learning place was destroyed; it was targeted soon after the conflict started. My textbooks turned to ash, and companions perished.

I was in elementary level on the seventh of October: the last day I went to school. That morning, alert signals blared through the halls. Some students wept, others gripped each other. Our instructor sought to soothe, but even her tone wavered. I remember wishing for a routine day; teaching, intermission, a poem recital. Instead, that day signaled the conclusion of my previous existence.

The war has taken so much. But the most painful deprivation of all is schooling, because without it, our prospects disappear.

Now I reside with my guardians, siblings and sister in a congested safe space in this coastal area. The shelter coverings flap in the wind, providing no climate control. We wait in line for sustenance and drinks. Electricity is a dream and seclusion is unavailable. Aspiration appears brittle.

At darkness, I gaze toward the night lights through the openings of my temporary home and question if my peers see the identical heavens. Some message me when they are able, expressing they miss school and have preserved their old notebooks; like valuables from a bygone era. I feel guilty because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once aspired to pursuing pedagogy to help Gaza’s children acquire knowledge, even when existence was challenging. Now I aim for being a writer – to draft, to speak and to demonstrate the world what it signifies to be a young person in the Strip. I want to narrate our accounts of anxiety and deprivation, but also courage. Because even in this place, amid death and ruins, our voices refuse to be silent.

When there’s some internet, I try to study digitally. On other occasions, I attend a tiny space where aid workers instruct us math and Arabic. The sessions are brief – the electricity cuts out or the attacks recommence but in those moments, I sense being. I remember who I was: the girl who adored mathematics and poetry, who believed knowledge could alter reality.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our homes, educational institutions and relatives. I grieved for my paternal relative, his spouse, and their young ones. I forfeited my beautiful city, Rafah, 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 express this: keep our hopes alive. We don’t want pity, we demand measures. The youth are entitled to texts, learning environments and safety. Learning is not optional, it is a basic right. The territory is not just ruins; it is minors who persist in hoping under aerial surveillance at evening. It is my story and I will keep drafting, even if the sole items remaining is a broken pencil and a fragment of ripped sheet.

'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. Initially in Khan Younis, then in another location, and currently in the central camp in the middle of the territory. In pre-conflict times, I typically educated several sets of about fourty pupils per class, almost two hundred forty individuals keen on education.

Instructing them was my vocation and delight in existence, and I still recall the sparkle in a pupil's gaze when a new idea clicked; the sort of occasion every teacher cherishes.

I always believed instruction should be dynamic. My learning environment was a area of amusement, aesthetics, and movement. We created cartographic art, performed past occurrences, and converted teaching into tales.

Laughter always occupied the area as curiosity displaced apprehension. Yes, even prior to conflict, young residents were always afraid. My teaching space was a protected zone but after the seventh, the situation transformed.

My learning center became a refuge for households escaping the bombs. Soon, it was attacked and totally demolished. There are hardly any schools remaining intact in this area now. For 24 months, all has been unusual. The hostilities has shattered every facet of our existence: security, dwellings, schools, hopes. Apprehension and mourning are perpetual experiences.

Numerous of my pupils are now deceased – youth who talked about becoming doctors, painters, and instructors. They were denied even the entitlement to survival. Those who are still here experience malnutrition, displacement and fatigue – and however, they still maintain the will to learn.

At times, when the internet enables, I hear from a small number of them. They write questioning: “Are you OK, educator?” We communicate concise phrases, abbreviated teaching, small glimmers of contact amid the disorder. They question if things will ever go back to normal. I state to them I don’t know.

Across this territory, instructors, aid workers and non-profits try to teach wherever possible: in tents, damaged classrooms, or congested safe zones. Learning has become an gesture of resistance, a way to declare: “We are still here.” And provided that we persist in education, we will remain.

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