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'Our plea is for action, not compassion'.

A young student, 12, a temporary shelter

It has been 24 months since I entered a proper school. Two years since I heard the school chime at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, sat at my desk and answered questions during my favourite class. Sometimes I still vividly remember the sounds and smells: powder from the board, sharpener leftovers, cheerful echoes. But my learning place was destroyed; it was struck soon after the war began. My learning materials incinerated, and several classmates lost.

I was in the fifth year on the seventh of October: the final day I attended classes. That beginning of the day, warning alarms screamed through the corridors. Some pupils sobbed, others held hands tightly. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even her voice trembled. I remember wishing for a ordinary day; teaching, recess, a literary performance. 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 it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

Now I dwell alongside my guardians, two brothers and sister in a packed refuge in Khan Younis. The tent walls move with air currents, failing to insulate. We wait in line for nourishment and hydration. Energy access is fantasy and personal space is absent. Hope feels fragile.

At evening, I observe the night lights through the holes of my tent and wonder if my peers see the comparable vista. Some message me when they can, stating they miss school and have preserved their old notebooks; like valuables from a bygone era. I feel ashamed because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once aspired to becoming a teacher to help young residents acquire knowledge, even when life was hard. Now I dream of being a writer – to compose, to speak and to demonstrate the world what it means to be a child in this region. I want to narrate our accounts of fear and hunger, but also courage. Because even amid these conditions, amid fatality and debris, our expressions persist.

When there’s some internet, I attempt learning online. Sometimes, I visit a small tent where helpers teach us arithmetic and Arabic. The sessions are brief – the electricity cuts out or the airstrikes begin again but in such times, I feel alive. I remember who I was: the young woman who cherished arithmetic and verse, who was convinced education could transform society.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our homes, schools and kin. I lost my paternal relative, his spouse, and their children. I lost my cherished hometown, Rafah, which is nothing but rubble now. But the hardest loss of all is schooling, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the world, I express this: keep our hopes alive. We don’t want pity, we require steps. Young residents deserve literature, educational facilities and protection. Schooling is not optional, it is a basic right. This region is not merely devastation; it is children who continue to aspire under aerial surveillance at night. It is my account and I will keep drafting, even if the sole items remaining is a fractured utensil and a fragment of ripped sheet.

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

An educator, forty, teacher in central Gaza

I have been instructing in the region for a substantial period. Initially in a southern city, then in a different town, and now in al-Bureij camp in the middle of the territory. Prior to hostilities, I regularly instructed six classes of about fourty pupils per class, almost two hundred forty individuals enthusiastic about knowledge.

Teaching them was my mission and happiness in existence, and I still remember the gleam in a pupil's gaze when a knowledge was acquired; the sort of occasion every educator strives for.

I always thought education should be dynamic. My learning environment was a area of play, art, and movement. We painted maps, acted out historical events, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Merriment always filled the room as inquisitiveness substituted anxiety. Certainly, even prior to conflict, local youth were always afraid. My classroom was a place of safety but after the seventh, the situation transformed.

My learning center became a refuge for households escaping the bombs. Shortly after, it was struck and completely destroyed. There are very few schools left standing in the region now. For two years, all has been unusual. The conflict has shattered every part of our existence: protection, residences, educational centers, hopes. Fear and grief are perpetual experiences.

A significant number of my pupils are now lost – minors who mentioned becoming medical professionals, artists, and teachers. They were refused even the entitlement to survival. Those who remain live with malnutrition, displacement and weariness – and nevertheless, they still maintain the will to learn.

Sometimes, when the connectivity allows, I get in touch with a few of them. They write questioning: “Are you safe, teacher?” We exchange brief words, short lessons, minor flashes of contact amid the chaos. They question if circumstances will ever go back to normal. I tell them I don’t know.

Across the region, educators, helpers and organizations try to teach in all available spaces: in shelters, destroyed learning spaces, or congested safe zones. Learning has become an gesture of resistance, a way to say: “We are still here.” And provided that we persist in education, we will remain.

Many of us are also caregivers. I am a parent of {three|several