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'Our plea is for action, not compassion'.

A young student, 12, al-Mawasi

It has been two years since I was last inside a learning environment. Two years since I heard the school chime at the institution I attended, occupied my place and raised my hand during my favourite class. At times I still clearly recall the auditory and olfactory sensations: powder from the board, pencil shavings, joyful sounds in corridors. But my learning place was destroyed; it was targeted not long after the hostilities erupted. My books were burned, and companions perished.

I was in elementary level on that fateful day: the concluding day I attended classes. That early hours, air raid sirens blared through the halls. Some children cried, others gripped each other. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even her tone wavered. I remember wishing for a normal day; lessons, intermission, a poem recital. Instead, that day became the last page of my former reality.

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

Now I dwell alongside my parents, siblings and female sibling in a packed refuge in this coastal area. The temporary partitions move with air currents, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We line up for nourishment and hydration. Energy access is fantasy and privacy doesn’t exist. Optimism seems delicate.

At darkness, I look up at the celestial bodies through the holes of my tent and wonder if my friends see the same sky. Some reach out when they can, saying they long for education and have kept their former exercise books; like treasures from a lost world. I feel ashamed because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once envisioned becoming a teacher to support Gaza’s children learn, even when existence was challenging. Now I aim for being a journalist – to write, to communicate and to show the world what it signifies to be a child in the Strip. I want to tell our stories of anxiety and deprivation, but also bravery. Because even amid these conditions, amid fatality and debris, 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 educate us math and Arabic. The instruction is limited – the energy supply stops or the attacks recommence but in those moments, I feel alive. I recollect who I was: the student who loved numbers and poems, who thought knowledge could alter reality.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our homes, schools and kin. I lost my family member, his wife, and their young ones. I forfeited my beloved urban area, Rafah, which is only ruins now. But the hardest loss of all is education, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the international community, I express this: don’t let our dreams die. We seek no sympathy, we demand measures. Young residents merit books, educational facilities and safety. Education is not a luxury, it is a fundamental entitlement. The territory is not only destruction; it is minors who still dream under aerial surveillance at night. It is my account and I will persist in composing, even if my only possessions is a broken pencil and a piece of torn paper.

'Students ask: "Teacher, are you safe?"'.

An educator, forty, teacher in central Gaza

I have been teaching in the region for over ten years. First in a southern city, then in another location, and currently in al-Bureij camp in the central Gaza Strip. Prior to hostilities, I used to teach several sets of about fourty pupils per class, almost two hundred forty individuals enthusiastic about knowledge.

Educating them was my purpose and joy in life, and I still recall the sparkle in a student’s eyes when a new idea clicked; the type of instance every instructor lives for.

I always was convinced education should be dynamic. My classroom was a zone of play, aesthetics, and motion. We painted maps, performed past occurrences, and turned lessons into stories.

Laughter always filled the room as inquisitiveness replaced apprehension. Indeed, even prior to conflict, children in Gaza were always frightened. My learning environment was a protected zone but after the seventh, the situation transformed.

My educational institution became a shelter for families fleeing the aerial attacks. Shortly after, it was targeted and entirely ruined. There are almost no learning institutions still erect in Gaza now. For this period, all has been unusual. The war has broken every aspect of our existence: protection, homes, learning places, aspirations. Fear and grief are ever-present realities.

Many of my students are now dead – youth who mentioned aspiring to be doctors, painters, and instructors. They were deprived even the right to exist. Those who are still here endure hunger, displacement and exhaustion – and yet, they still cling to the desire for education.

At times, when the online access permits, I get in touch with a few of them. They write questioning: “Are you safe, teacher?” We exchange short messages, abbreviated teaching, minor flashes of connection amid the turmoil. They ask if circumstances will ever revert to standard. I state to them I have no answer.

Throughout the region, instructors, aid workers and organizations try to teach in all available spaces: in shelters, ruined educational areas, or congested safe zones. Learning has become an gesture of resistance, a way to express: “We persist.” And so long as we continue learning, we will endure.

Many of us are also guardians. I am a mother of {three|several