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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

A young student, 12, a temporary shelter

It has been 24 months since I was last inside a real classroom. Two years since I listened to the start-of-class signal at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, took my seat and answered questions during my preferred subject. Occasionally I still vividly remember the sounds and smells: powder from the board, sharpener leftovers, joyful sounds in corridors. But my educational institution is gone; it was bombed shortly after the hostilities erupted. My books were burned, and several classmates lost.

I was in the fifth year on that fateful day: the last day I went to school. That early hours, warning alarms sounded through the halls. Some children cried, others gripped each other. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even her voice trembled. I remember hoping for a ordinary day; teaching, break time, a verse presentation. Instead, that day marked the end of my previous existence.

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

Now I dwell alongside my guardians, siblings and sister in a packed refuge in Khan Younis. The tent walls sway with breezes, failing to insulate. We line up for water and food. Power is imaginary and privacy doesn’t exist. Optimism seems delicate.

At darkness, I gaze toward the celestial bodies through the gaps of my temporary home and wonder if my friends see the same sky. Some message me when they manage, saying they long for education and have retained their old notebooks; like treasures from a lost world. I feel ashamed because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once dreamed of becoming a teacher to assist local youth study, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I dream of being a writer – to draft, to talk and to show the world what it means to be a child in this region. I want to share our experiences of fear and hunger, but also courage. Because even here, amid fatality and debris, our words continue.

When online access exists, I endeavor to educate myself via the web. On other occasions, I visit a tiny space where aid workers teach us arithmetic and Arabic. The lessons are short – the energy supply stops or the bombing resumes but in such times, I sense being. I recollect who I was: the young woman who loved numbers and poems, who believed education could transform society.

The war has taken so much; our dwellings, learning centers and families. I grieved for my family member, his partner, and their young ones. I said goodbye to my cherished hometown, that southern city, which is only ruins now. But the hardest loss of all is schooling, because without it, our prospects disappear.

To the international community, I express this: don’t let our dreams die. We don’t want pity, we demand measures. Gaza’s children are entitled to books, schools and safety. Schooling is not optional, it is a basic right. The territory is not merely devastation; it is youth who persist in hoping amid unmanned aircraft at darkness. It is my story and I will persist in composing, even if all I have left is a fractured utensil and a fragment of ripped sheet.

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

Naglaa Weshah, 40, teacher in a refugee camp

I have been teaching in the region for more than a decade. Originally in Khan Younis, then in a different town, and now in the central camp in the heart of the region. Before the war started, I regularly instructed six classes of about fourty pupils per class, nearly 240 young minds keen on education.

Instructing them was my mission and happiness in reality, and I still remember the gleam in a learner's look when a concept was understood; the kind of moment every teacher cherishes.

I always believed instruction should be dynamic. My classroom was a space of play, art, and movement. We created cartographic art, dramatized bygone episodes, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Joy always occupied the area as interest substituted fear. Certainly, even before the war, children in Gaza were always scared. My classroom was a secure location but after the seventh, all was altered.

My school became a safe haven for relatives fleeing the aerial attacks. Soon, it was attacked and completely destroyed. There are almost no learning institutions still erect in Gaza now. For this period, all has been unusual. The war has shattered every part of our lives: security, residences, educational centers, dreams. Anxiety and sorrow are perpetual experiences.

Many of my students are now deceased – youth who mentioned dreaming of doctors, artists, and teachers. They were refused even the entitlement to survival. Those who survive endure malnutrition, eviction and weariness – and however, they still maintain the desire for education.

At times, when the internet enables, I get in touch with a handful of them. They message asking: “Are you safe, instructor?” We exchange short messages, abbreviated teaching, minor flashes of connection amid the chaos. They ask if situations will ever go back to normal. I inform them I have no answer.

Across the region, instructors, aid workers and charities try to teach wherever possible: in shelters, destroyed learning spaces, or congested safe zones. Learning has become an gesture of resistance, a way to declare: “Our presence continues.” And as long as we persist in education, we will remain.

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