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'We seek action, not sympathy'.

A young student, 12, al-Mawasi

For the past two years since I entered a real classroom. Two years since I listened to the school chime at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, took my seat and participated actively during my favourite class. Sometimes I still distinctly recollect the familiar scents and noises: chalk dust, sharpener leftovers, cheerful echoes. But my school no longer exists; it was bombed soon after the conflict started. My books were burned, and some of my friends killed.

I was in fifth grade on the seventh of October: the final day I attended classes. That morning, air raid sirens screamed through the halls. Some children cried, others gripped each other. Our instructor sought to soothe, but even her voice trembled. I remember hoping for a normal day; instruction, recess, a literary performance. Instead, that day signaled the conclusion of my previous existence.

Conflict has stolen countless things. But the hardest loss of all is education, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

Now I dwell alongside my parents, male relatives and sister in a congested safe space in Khan Younis. The tent walls sway with breezes, failing to insulate. We wait in line for sustenance and drinks. Electricity is a dream and seclusion is unavailable. Aspiration appears brittle.

At evening, I observe the night lights through the holes of my shelter and question if my companions see the identical heavens. Some contact me when they are able, stating they miss school and have kept their previous journals; like relics of a vanished time. I feel remorseful because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once aspired to pursuing pedagogy to assist local youth learn, even when existence was challenging. Now I aim for being a writer – to draft, to communicate and to demonstrate the world what it signifies to be a child in this region. I want to narrate our accounts of apprehension and need, but also fortitude. Because even amid these conditions, amid loss and destruction, our expressions persist.

When connectivity is available, I try to study via the web. Sometimes, I visit a modest shelter where helpers educate us mathematics and language. The sessions are brief – the energy supply stops or the bombing resumes but in those moments, I experience vitality. I recollect who I was: the student who loved numbers and poems, who was convinced education could transform society.

The war has taken so much; our homes, learning centers and kin. I grieved for my uncle, his partner, and their offspring. I said goodbye to my cherished hometown, my previous home, which is nothing but rubble now. But the toughest sacrifice of all is education, because without it, our prospects disappear.

To the world, I express this: preserve our aspirations. Compassion isn't enough, we demand measures. Gaza’s children merit literature, educational facilities and security. Schooling is not a luxury, it is a essential privilege. This region is not merely devastation; it is minors who still dream beneath the drones at evening. It is my story and I will keep drafting, even if the sole items remaining is a broken pencil and a fragment of ripped sheet.

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

Naglaa Weshah, 40, instructor in a refugee camp

I have been educating in the region for more than a decade. Originally in Khan Younis, then in Deir al-Balah, and presently in the central camp in the central Gaza Strip. In pre-conflict times, I typically educated multiple groups of about dozens of learners, almost two hundred forty individuals eager to learn.

Instructing them was my mission and happiness in life, and I still recall the gleam in a pupil's gaze when a knowledge was acquired; the type of instance every educator cherishes.

I always was convinced learning should be vibrant. My classroom was a space of amusement, creativity, and movement. We created cartographic art, dramatized bygone episodes, and turned lessons into stories.

Laughter always filled the room as curiosity replaced anxiety. Yes, even before the war, local youth were always afraid. My classroom was a place of safety but after 7 October, all was altered.

My school became a safe haven for families escaping the explosives. Not long later, it was attacked and totally demolished. There are almost no schools left standing in the region now. For two years, all has been unusual. The war has broken every aspect of our lives: protection, dwellings, learning places, dreams. Anxiety and sorrow are ever-present realities.

A significant number of my learners are now lost – children who talked about dreaming of doctors, creatives, and instructors. They were denied even the right to exist. Those who remain experience malnutrition, displacement and fatigue – and nevertheless, they still cling to the desire for education.

Sometimes, when the internet permits, I get in touch with a few of them. They message asking: “Are you safe, educator?” We share brief words, short lessons, small glimmers of contact amid the turmoil. They ask if things will ever go back to normal. I inform them I don’t know.

Throughout Gaza, instructors, volunteers and charities try to teach in all available spaces: in tents, damaged classrooms, or congested safe zones. Schooling has become an act of defiance, a way to declare: “We are still here.” And provided that we continue learning, we will endure.

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