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'Our plea is for action, not compassion'.

Juwayriya Adwan, twelve, Khan Younis

For the past 24 months since I entered a proper school. Two years since I heard the start-of-class signal at my former school, occupied my place and participated actively during my preferred subject. Sometimes I still distinctly recollect the auditory and olfactory sensations: powder from the board, sharpener leftovers, laughter echoing down the halls. But my learning place was destroyed; it was targeted soon after the war began. My learning materials incinerated, and companions perished.

I was in fifth grade on the seventh of October: the last day I entered the school building. That early hours, warning alarms blared through the halls. Some children cried, others gripped each other. Our educator attempted reassurance, but even her tone wavered. I remember longing for a routine day; teaching, recess, a literary performance. Instead, that day became the last page of my previous existence.

Hostilities have claimed innumerable aspects. But the toughest sacrifice of all is learning, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

Now I live with my guardians, siblings and sister in a congested safe space in Khan Younis. The tent walls move with air currents, failing to insulate. We queue for water and food. Power is imaginary and seclusion is unavailable. Aspiration appears brittle.

At evening, I gaze toward the stars through the openings of my temporary home and question if my peers see the identical heavens. Some message me when they can, saying they long for education and have preserved their previous journals; like relics of a vanished time. I feel guilty because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once aspired to pursuing pedagogy to assist local youth acquire knowledge, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I aim for being a writer – to compose, to communicate and to demonstrate the world what it means to be a child in the Strip. I want to tell our stories of fear and hunger, but also courage. Because even here, amid loss and destruction, our words continue.

When there’s some internet, I endeavor to educate myself online. On other occasions, I go to a small tent where volunteers teach us math and Arabic. The instruction is limited – the energy supply stops or the bombing resumes but in these instances, I feel alive. 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, educational institutions and relatives. I lost my family member, his partner, and their young ones. I lost my beloved urban area, Rafah, which is merely debris now. But the hardest loss of all is learning, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the international community, I say this: keep our hopes alive. Compassion isn't enough, we require steps. Gaza’s children are entitled to texts, educational facilities and safety. Education is not a luxury, it is a basic right. This region is not merely devastation; it is children who still dream under aerial surveillance at night. It is my narrative and I will persist in composing, even if all I have left is a damaged writing tool and a fragment of ripped sheet.

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

An educator, forty, teacher in central Gaza

I have been instructing in this area for over ten years. Initially in Khan Younis, then in Deir al-Balah, and now in this refugee settlement in the central Gaza Strip. In pre-conflict times, I used to teach six classes of about fourty pupils per class, almost two hundred forty individuals eager to learn.

Teaching them was my vocation and delight in reality, and I still recollect the sparkle in a learner's look when a concept was understood; the type of instance every instructor cherishes.

I always was convinced education should be vibrant. My classroom was a area of play, aesthetics, and movement. We designed geographical illustrations, performed past occurrences, and turned lessons into stories.

Joy always occupied the area as inquisitiveness displaced anxiety. Yes, even before the war, local youth were always afraid. My classroom was a protected zone but after 7 October, all was altered.

My learning center became a refuge for households fleeing the bombs. Shortly after, it was struck and entirely ruined. There are hardly any educational facilities remaining intact in Gaza now. For two years, all has been unusual. The war has broken every facet of our existence: safety, homes, educational centers, aspirations. Fear and grief are perpetual experiences.

Many of my learners are now deceased – youth who spoke of dreaming of medical professionals, artists, and teachers. They were denied even the right to exist. Those who remain live with starvation, relocation and exhaustion – and nevertheless, they still cling to the thirst for knowledge.

At times, when the internet allows, I get in touch with a handful of them. They contact inquiring: “Are you OK, educator?” We share short messages, miniature instruction, small glimmers of contact amid the disorder. They inquire if situations will ever go back to normal. I inform them I am uncertain.

Across Gaza, educators, aid workers and charities attempt instruction wherever possible: in shelters, damaged classrooms, or crowded shelters. Education has become an gesture of resistance, a way to declare: “We are still here.” And as long as we persist in education, we will persist.

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