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'We seek action, not sympathy'.

A young student, 12, a temporary shelter

It has been 24 months since I entered a proper school. That long since I heard the start-of-class signal at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, occupied my place and answered questions during my favourite class. Occasionally I still distinctly recollect the sounds and smells: powder from the board, pencil shavings, joyful sounds in corridors. But my learning place was destroyed; it was targeted shortly after the hostilities erupted. My learning materials incinerated, and companions perished.

I was in the fifth year on 7 October: the last day I attended classes. That early hours, warning alarms blared through the halls. Some children cried, others clasped palms firmly. Our educator attempted reassurance, but even she sounded shaky. I remember longing for a ordinary day; lessons, intermission, a literary performance. Instead, that day signaled the conclusion of my previous existence.

Hostilities have claimed innumerable aspects. But the toughest sacrifice of all is education, because that is the loss of the future itself.

Now I reside with my mother and father, male relatives and female sibling in a congested safe space in al-Mawasi. The tent walls flap in the wind, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We wait in line for nourishment and hydration. Electricity is a dream and personal space is absent. Hope feels fragile.

At night, I look up at the stars through the openings of my shelter and ponder if my friends see the same sky. Some contact me when they can, saying they yearn for classes and have preserved their old notebooks; like treasures from a lost world. I feel ashamed because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once dreamed of pursuing pedagogy to help Gaza’s children learn, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I aim for being a reporter – to draft, to speak and to reveal the world what it represents to be a young person in the Strip. I want to narrate our accounts of apprehension and need, but also bravery. Because even in this place, amid loss and destruction, our words continue.

When connectivity is available, I try to study online. On other occasions, I visit a tiny space where helpers educate us mathematics and language. The lessons are short – the power fails or the airstrikes begin again but in those moments, I feel alive. I recall who I was: the young woman who adored mathematics and poetry, who thought knowledge could alter reality.

Hostilities have stolen countless aspects; our dwellings, educational institutions and families. I lost my paternal relative, his partner, and their children. I lost my cherished hometown, that southern city, which is nothing but rubble now. But the most painful deprivation of all is learning, because without it, our prospects disappear.

To the global audience, I express this: don’t let our dreams die. We don’t want pity, we demand measures. The youth deserve texts, schools and safety. Education is not a luxury, it is a fundamental entitlement. Gaza is not just ruins; it is youth who persist in hoping beneath the drones at evening. It is my story and I will persist in composing, even if the sole items remaining is a broken pencil and a piece of torn paper.

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

An educator, 40, instructor in al-Bureij camp

I have been teaching in Gaza for a substantial period. First in that urban area, then in Deir al-Balah, and presently in this refugee settlement in the central Gaza Strip. In pre-conflict times, I regularly instructed six classes of about dozens of learners, hundreds of eager students keen on education.

Instructing them was my purpose and joy in existence, and I still recollect the gleam in a student’s eyes when a concept was understood; the kind of moment every educator lives for.

I always thought education should be vibrant. My classroom was a space of recreation, aesthetics, and motion. We painted maps, acted out historical events, and turned lessons into stories.

Laughter always permeated the space as interest replaced apprehension. Indeed, even prior to conflict, local youth were always afraid. My teaching space was a secure location but after the seventh, everything changed.

My school became a safe haven for families escaping the bombs. Not long later, it was attacked and totally demolished. There are very few schools still erect in the region now. For two years, everything has been abnormal. The war has destroyed every part of our lives: security, residences, educational centers, hopes. Apprehension and mourning are constant companions.

Numerous of my pupils are now lost – youth who mentioned becoming doctors, painters, and educators. They were refused even the right to exist. Those who survive endure malnutrition, eviction and fatigue – and nevertheless, they still hold onto the thirst for knowledge.

Occasionally, when the internet enables, I hear from a small number of them. They write questioning: “How are you, educator?” We communicate concise phrases, abbreviated teaching, minor flashes of contact amid the disorder. They ask if situations will ever return to usual. I tell them I don’t know.

Throughout this territory, educators, volunteers and non-profits try to teach in all available spaces: in shelters, destroyed learning spaces, or congested safe zones. Schooling has become an gesture of resistance, a way to say: “We persist.” And so long as we persist in education, we will endure.

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