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'We seek action, not sympathy'.

A young student, twelve, al-Mawasi

It has been 24 months since I stepped into a learning environment. Two years since I heard the school chime at my former school, occupied my place and participated actively during my preferred subject. Occasionally I still clearly recall the familiar scents and noises: chalk dust, sharpener leftovers, laughter echoing down the halls. But my learning place was destroyed; it was targeted shortly after the war began. My learning materials incinerated, and several classmates lost.

I was in fifth grade on the seventh of October: the concluding day I went to school. That early hours, alert signals screamed through the halls. Some children cried, others gripped each other. Our instructor sought to soothe, but even her tone wavered. I remember wishing for a routine day; lessons, recess, a literary performance. Instead, that day marked the end of my former reality.

Conflict has stolen countless things. But the hardest loss of all is learning, because that is the loss of the future itself.

Now I live with my parents, male relatives and female sibling in a crowded shelter in al-Mawasi. The tent walls flap in the wind, providing no climate control. We line up for sustenance and drinks. Electricity is a dream and privacy doesn’t exist. Aspiration appears brittle.

At night, I observe the stars through the holes of my shelter and question if my friends see the same sky. Some reach out when they can, expressing they yearn for classes and have retained their former exercise books; like treasures from a lost world. I feel remorseful because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once dreamed of becoming a teacher to help young residents study, even when existence was challenging. Now I aim for being a writer – 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 fear and hunger, but also courage. Because even here, amid loss and destruction, our voices refuse to be silent.

When there’s some internet, I endeavor to educate myself online. Other times, I attend a small tent where aid workers instruct us mathematics and language. The sessions are brief – the energy supply stops or the airstrikes begin again but in these instances, I experience vitality. I recollect who I was: the student who cherished arithmetic and verse, who believed learning could change the world.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our homes, schools and kin. I mourned my paternal relative, his wife, and their offspring. I said goodbye to my beautiful city, Rafah, which is nothing but rubble now. But the toughest sacrifice of all is learning, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

To the world, I state this: don’t let our dreams die. We don’t want pity, we want action. Young residents are entitled to literature, schools and security. Schooling is not an extravagance, it is a basic right. The territory is not just ruins; it is minors who still dream under aerial surveillance at darkness. It is my narrative and I will persist in composing, even if all I have left is a damaged writing tool and a scrap of damaged material.

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

An educator, forty, instructor in a refugee camp

I have been educating in Gaza for a substantial period. Initially in that urban area, then in another location, and currently in this refugee settlement in the heart of the region. Prior to hostilities, I used to teach six classes of about fourty pupils per class, almost two hundred forty individuals keen on education.

Educating them was my mission and happiness in life, and I still recall the gleam in a pupil's gaze when a concept was understood; the kind of moment every instructor strives for.

I always thought learning should be full of life. My classroom was a space of play, art, and motion. We created cartographic art, acted out historical events, and turned lessons into stories.

Laughter always permeated the space as interest displaced apprehension. Certainly, even in earlier times, children in Gaza were always afraid. My learning environment was a protected zone but after that day, everything changed.

My educational institution became a shelter for households escaping the bombs. Not long later, it was targeted and entirely ruined. There are very few schools still erect in Gaza now. For 24 months, all has been unusual. The hostilities has destroyed every facet of our reality: protection, homes, schools, hopes. Fear and grief are ever-present realities.

Many of my pupils are now deceased – children who mentioned aspiring to be physicians, painters, and educators. They were refused even the privilege of living. Those who remain endure malnutrition, relocation and fatigue – and however, they still maintain the thirst for knowledge.

Sometimes, when the online access enables, I receive messages from a small number of them. They write asking: “How are you, instructor?” We exchange brief words, abbreviated teaching, small glimmers of connection amid the disorder. They inquire if situations will ever go back to normal. I state to them I have no answer.

Throughout the region, instructors, volunteers and charities try to teach wherever possible: in shelters, destroyed learning spaces, or packed refuges. Learning has become an demonstration of perseverance, a way to express: “Our presence continues.” And as long as we continue learning, we will persist.

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