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'Our plea is for action, not compassion'.

Juwayriya Adwan, 12, a temporary shelter

For the past two years since I entered a real classroom. That long since I heard the morning bell at my former school, took my seat and participated actively during my preferred subject. Sometimes I still vividly remember the sounds and smells: writing residue, sharpener leftovers, laughter echoing down the halls. But my learning place was destroyed; it was bombed not long after the hostilities erupted. My textbooks turned to ash, and companions perished.

I was in elementary level on that fateful day: the final day I entered the school building. That early hours, air raid sirens screamed through the passageways. Some children cried, others held hands tightly. Our instructor sought to soothe, but even her voice trembled. I remember wishing for a ordinary day; instruction, intermission, a poem recital. Instead, that day signaled the conclusion of my previous existence.

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

Now I dwell alongside my guardians, siblings and sister in a congested safe space in al-Mawasi. The temporary partitions move with air currents, failing to insulate. We line up for sustenance and drinks. Energy access is fantasy and privacy doesn’t exist. Hope feels fragile.

At night, I observe the stars through the gaps of my tent and wonder if my companions see the identical heavens. Some contact me when they can, expressing they yearn for classes 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 entering the education field to assist young residents study, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I hope for being a reporter – to compose, to communicate and to reveal the world what it means to be a young person in the Strip. I want to narrate our accounts of fear and hunger, but also fortitude. Because even here, amid death and ruins, our expressions persist.

When online access exists, I try to study online. Sometimes, I attend a modest shelter where volunteers educate us arithmetic and Arabic. The sessions are brief – the power fails or the airstrikes begin again but in these instances, I sense being. I recall who I was: the young woman who loved numbers and poems, who believed knowledge could alter reality.

The war has taken so much; our dwellings, educational institutions and families. I grieved for my paternal relative, his spouse, and their offspring. I said goodbye to my cherished hometown, that southern city, which is only ruins now. But the most painful deprivation of all is education, because without it, our prospects disappear.

To the world, I say this: keep our hopes alive. We seek no sympathy, we demand measures. Young residents are entitled to texts, schools and protection. Education is not a luxury, it is a basic right. Gaza is not just ruins; it is minors who still dream beneath the drones at evening. It is my narrative and I will keep drafting, even if all I have left is a fractured utensil and a scrap of damaged material.

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

Naglaa Weshah, forty, teacher in al-Bureij camp

I have been teaching in Gaza for more than a decade. First in Khan Younis, then in another location, and currently in this refugee settlement in the middle of the territory. Before the war started, I regularly instructed multiple groups of about dozens of learners, nearly 240 young minds keen on education.

Instructing them was my mission and happiness in reality, and I still recollect the gleam in a student’s eyes when a knowledge was acquired; the sort of occasion every teacher strives for.

I always was convinced learning should be full of life. My classroom was a area of amusement, creativity, and activity. We created cartographic art, performed past occurrences, and converted teaching into tales.

Merriment always permeated the space as interest replaced apprehension. Indeed, even in earlier times, young residents were always scared. My learning environment was a secure location but after that day, the situation transformed.

My learning center became a safe haven for relatives fleeing the aerial attacks. Shortly after, it was attacked and totally demolished. There are very few learning institutions still erect in this area now. For two years, all has been unusual. The war has destroyed every part of our reality: safety, dwellings, educational centers, hopes. Apprehension and mourning are ever-present realities.

Many of my pupils are now lost – minors who spoke of dreaming of medical professionals, artists, and instructors. They were denied even the right to exist. Those who survive experience starvation, eviction and weariness – and yet, they still cling to the will to learn.

Occasionally, when the internet allows, I receive messages from a small number of them. They message inquiring: “Are you OK, educator?” We communicate short messages, miniature instruction, small glimmers of connection amid the turmoil. They inquire if situations will ever revert to standard. I tell them I am uncertain.

Throughout this territory, instructors, aid workers and charities endeavor education in all available spaces: in temporary structures, damaged classrooms, or packed refuges. Learning has become an act of defiance, a way to express: “We are still here.” And provided that we persist in education, we will endure.

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