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'Our plea is for action, not compassion'.

Juwayriya Adwan, twelve, al-Mawasi

It has been 24 months since I entered a learning environment. That long since I heard the start-of-class signal at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, took my seat and answered questions during my favourite class. Sometimes I still distinctly recollect the auditory and olfactory sensations: chalk dust, pencil shavings, joyful sounds in corridors. But my learning place was destroyed; it was targeted not long after the hostilities erupted. My learning materials incinerated, and some of my friends killed.

I was in elementary level on that fateful day: the final day I entered the school building. That beginning of the day, alert signals blared through the passageways. Some pupils sobbed, others held hands tightly. Our instructor sought to soothe, but even her voice trembled. I remember hoping for a normal day; teaching, break time, a literary performance. Instead, that day signaled the conclusion of my former reality.

Hostilities have claimed innumerable aspects. But the hardest loss of all is education, because without it, our prospects disappear.

Now I dwell alongside my mother and father, male relatives and female sibling in a packed refuge in this coastal area. The tent walls move with air currents, providing no climate control. We queue for sustenance and drinks. Electricity is a dream and personal space is absent. Aspiration appears brittle.

At darkness, I look up at the night lights through the gaps of my shelter and ponder if my peers see the comparable vista. Some reach out when they are able, saying they long for education and have kept their previous journals; like valuables from a bygone era. I feel guilty because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once dreamed of pursuing pedagogy to assist young residents learn, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I aim for being a writer – to write, to speak and to reveal the world what it signifies to be a minor in the Strip. I want to narrate our accounts of apprehension and need, but also courage. Because even in this place, amid fatality and debris, our words continue.

When connectivity is available, I try to study digitally. Other times, I attend a tiny space where volunteers instruct us math and Arabic. The instruction is limited – the energy supply stops or the attacks recommence but in these instances, I experience vitality. I remember who I was: the girl who loved numbers and poems, who was convinced learning could change the world.

The war has taken so much; our residences, learning centers and kin. I grieved for my paternal relative, his spouse, and their young ones. I forfeited my beautiful city, that southern city, which is nothing but rubble now. But the hardest loss of all is education, because without it, our prospects disappear.

To the world, I express this: preserve our aspirations. We seek no sympathy, we require steps. Gaza’s children merit books, learning environments and protection. Schooling is not a luxury, it is a essential privilege. This region is not just ruins; it is minors who persist in hoping under aerial surveillance at night. It is my narrative and I will continue writing, even if all I have left is a damaged writing tool and a scrap of damaged material.

'Pupils inquire: "Are you alright, educator?"'.

Naglaa Weshah, forty, teacher in al-Bureij camp

I have been teaching in this area for more than a decade. First in a southern city, then in Deir al-Balah, and currently in the central camp in the heart of the region. Prior to hostilities, I typically educated six classes of about 40 students each, hundreds of eager students enthusiastic about knowledge.

Teaching them was my mission and happiness in life, and I still recall the gleam in a learner's look when a new idea clicked; the type of instance every instructor strives for.

I always believed education should be vibrant. My classroom was a space of amusement, aesthetics, and motion. We designed geographical illustrations, dramatized bygone episodes, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Laughter always occupied the area as interest displaced apprehension. Certainly, even in earlier times, children in Gaza were always afraid. My teaching space was a place of safety but after 7 October, everything changed.

My school became a safe haven for relatives escaping the aerial attacks. Not long later, it was struck and entirely ruined. There are hardly any schools still erect in the region now. For 24 months, all has been unusual. The war has broken every aspect of our reality: safety, residences, learning places, aspirations. Anxiety and sorrow are ever-present realities.

A significant number of my students are now lost – youth who spoke of aspiring to be physicians, creatives, and teachers. They were deprived even the right to exist. Those who are still here live with starvation, relocation and weariness – and however, they still maintain the desire for education.

Occasionally, when the connectivity permits, I receive messages from a small number of them. They write asking: “Are you OK, instructor?” We share concise phrases, abbreviated teaching, small glimmers of contact amid the chaos. They inquire if things will ever go back to normal. I tell them I don’t know.

Throughout Gaza, educators, aid workers and non-profits attempt instruction in all available spaces: in temporary structures, destroyed learning spaces, or crowded shelters. Education has become an demonstration of perseverance, a way to express: “Our presence continues.” And provided that we persist in education, we will remain.

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