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'Our plea is for action, not compassion'.

A young student, 12, Khan Younis

It has been two years since I was last inside a proper school. Two years since I heard the school chime at my former school, took my seat and raised my hand during my favourite class. At times I still vividly remember the familiar scents and noises: chalk dust, pencil shavings, cheerful echoes. 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 the seventh of October: the final day I went to school. That early hours, alert signals sounded through the corridors. Some children cried, others gripped each other. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even her voice trembled. I remember longing for a ordinary day; instruction, recess, a poem recital. Instead, that day signaled the conclusion of my previous existence.

The war has taken so much. But the hardest loss of all is learning, because without it, our prospects disappear.

Now I dwell alongside my parents, male relatives and sister in a crowded shelter in this coastal area. The tent walls flap in the wind, failing to insulate. We queue for nourishment and hydration. Electricity is a dream and privacy doesn’t exist. Optimism seems delicate.

At evening, I gaze toward the night lights through the gaps of my tent and question if my friends see the comparable vista. Some message me when they can, expressing they miss school and have preserved their old notebooks; like relics of a vanished time. I feel remorseful because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once dreamed of becoming a teacher to assist young residents acquire knowledge, even when life was hard. Now I aim for being a reporter – to draft, to speak and to demonstrate the world what it represents to be a minor in the Strip. I want to narrate our accounts of anxiety and deprivation, but also bravery. Because even here, amid fatality and debris, our words continue.

When connectivity is available, I endeavor to educate myself via the web. Other times, I attend a small tent where volunteers educate us mathematics and language. The lessons are short – the electricity cuts out or the bombing resumes but in such times, I feel alive. I recall who I was: the student who loved numbers and poems, who thought education could transform society.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our dwellings, schools and kin. I lost my family member, his wife, and their children. I lost my beautiful city, Rafah, which is only ruins now. But the hardest loss of all is learning, because without it, our prospects disappear.

To the world, I express this: keep our hopes alive. We don’t want pity, we demand measures. Gaza’s children deserve literature, educational facilities and security. Education is not a luxury, it is a basic right. Gaza is not merely devastation; it is youth who persist in hoping beneath the drones at night. It is my story and I will keep drafting, even if the sole items remaining is a damaged writing tool and a piece of torn paper.

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

An educator, forty, teacher in al-Bureij camp

I have been teaching in the region for over ten years. Initially in a southern city, then in another location, and presently in this refugee settlement in the heart of the region. Prior to hostilities, I used to teach multiple groups of about fourty pupils per class, hundreds of eager students keen on education.

Educating them was my mission and happiness in reality, and I still recollect the sparkle in a pupil's gaze when a knowledge was acquired; the kind of moment every instructor lives for.

I always thought instruction should be full of life. My classroom was a area of recreation, aesthetics, and movement. We designed geographical illustrations, acted out historical events, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Merriment always occupied the area as curiosity replaced apprehension. Certainly, even before the war, children in Gaza were always afraid. My teaching space was a protected zone but after the seventh, the situation transformed.

My school became a shelter for households escaping the explosives. Not long later, it was attacked and entirely ruined. There are hardly any schools still erect in this area now. For this period, nothing has been normal. The war has broken every facet of our existence: safety, residences, educational centers, aspirations. Apprehension and mourning are perpetual experiences.

Many of my students are now deceased – minors who spoke of aspiring to be physicians, painters, and teachers. They were denied even the right to exist. Those who remain endure malnutrition, displacement and fatigue – and however, they still hold onto the will to learn.

Sometimes, when the connectivity enables, I get in touch with a small number of them. They write asking: “How are you, educator?” We share concise phrases, abbreviated teaching, minor flashes of connection amid the turmoil. They inquire if situations will ever revert to standard. I tell them I have no answer.

Throughout Gaza, educators, volunteers and organizations endeavor education in all available spaces: in shelters, destroyed learning spaces, or packed refuges. Learning has become an act of defiance, a way to declare: “Our presence continues.” And so long as we persist in education, we will remain.

A significant number of us are also caregivers. I am a guardian of {three|several