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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

Juwayriya Adwan, 12, Khan Younis

It has been 24 months since I entered a proper school. Two years since I heard the start-of-class signal at my former school, took my seat and participated actively during my beloved lesson. Sometimes I still vividly remember the familiar scents and noises: chalk dust, wooden scraps, laughter echoing down the halls. But my learning place was destroyed; it was targeted shortly after the hostilities erupted. My learning materials incinerated, and some of my friends killed.

I was in the fifth year 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 clasped palms firmly. Our instructor sought to soothe, but even she sounded shaky. I remember wishing for a routine day; instruction, intermission, a literary performance. Instead, that day signaled the conclusion of my former reality.

The war has taken so much. But the most painful deprivation of all is schooling, because without it, our prospects disappear.

Now I live with my mother and father, male relatives and female sibling in a packed refuge in this coastal area. The tent walls sway with breezes, providing no climate control. We queue for sustenance and drinks. Electricity is a dream and privacy doesn’t exist. Optimism seems delicate.

At darkness, I look up at the night lights through the openings of my tent and wonder if my companions see the same sky. Some message me when they are able, saying they long for education and have preserved their previous journals; like treasures from a lost world. I feel guilty because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once envisioned pursuing pedagogy to support Gaza’s children study, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I aim for being a writer – to compose, to talk and to show the world what it means to be a minor in this region. I want to narrate our accounts of anxiety and deprivation, but also bravery. Because even here, amid fatality and debris, our expressions persist.

When connectivity is available, I endeavor to educate myself digitally. Other times, I attend a modest shelter where volunteers instruct us mathematics and language. The lessons are short – the energy supply stops or the bombing resumes but in these instances, I feel alive. I remember who I was: the young woman who loved numbers and poems, who believed knowledge could alter reality.

The war has taken so much; our residences, educational institutions and kin. I lost my paternal relative, his partner, and their children. I lost my beloved urban area, that southern city, which is nothing but rubble now. But the most painful deprivation of all is education, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

To the world, I express this: keep our hopes alive. We don’t want pity, we demand measures. Young residents deserve texts, learning environments and protection. Education is not a luxury, it is a fundamental entitlement. The territory is not merely devastation; it is minors who still dream under aerial surveillance at darkness. 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.

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

Naglaa Weshah, forty, teacher in al-Bureij camp

I have been educating in Gaza for more than a decade. Originally in Khan Younis, then in Deir al-Balah, and presently in al-Bureij camp in the middle of the territory. Before the war started, I regularly instructed six classes of about 40 students each, nearly 240 young minds eager to learn.

Educating them was my mission and happiness in reality, and I still recall the twinkle in a pupil's gaze when a concept was understood; the type of instance every teacher lives for.

I always was convinced instruction should be full of life. My classroom was a area of play, creativity, and movement. We created cartographic art, acted out historical events, and converted teaching into tales.

Laughter always filled the room as inquisitiveness replaced anxiety. Certainly, even in earlier times, local youth were always scared. My teaching space was a place of safety but after the seventh, all was altered.

My school became a safe haven for relatives escaping the bombs. Shortly after, it was attacked and entirely ruined. There are hardly any educational facilities still erect in Gaza now. For this period, everything has been abnormal. The hostilities has destroyed every part of our reality: protection, homes, learning places, hopes. Fear and grief are ever-present realities.

Many of my pupils are now lost – children who mentioned dreaming of medical professionals, painters, and teachers. They were deprived even the entitlement to survival. Those who remain endure malnutrition, displacement and weariness – and nevertheless, they still hold onto the thirst for knowledge.

Sometimes, when the connectivity enables, I hear from a small number of them. They contact inquiring: “Are you OK, instructor?” We exchange short messages, miniature instruction, tiny sparks of interaction amid the disorder. They question if things will ever return to usual. I inform them I am uncertain.

All over Gaza, educators, aid workers and non-profits attempt instruction in any feasible location: in tents, destroyed learning spaces, or crowded shelters. Schooling has become an act of defiance, a way to say: “Our presence continues.” And so long as we continue learning, we will persist.

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