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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

A young student, twelve, al-Mawasi

For the past 24 months since I was last inside a real classroom. Two years since I listened to the start-of-class signal at my former school, sat at my desk and answered questions during my favourite class. Occasionally I still distinctly recollect the auditory and olfactory sensations: writing residue, pencil shavings, laughter echoing down the halls. But my learning place was destroyed; it was bombed soon after the hostilities erupted. My learning materials incinerated, and several classmates lost.

I was in elementary level on the seventh of October: the final day I went to school. That early hours, warning alarms sounded through the passageways. Some students wept, others held hands tightly. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even she sounded shaky. I remember longing for a routine day; teaching, intermission, a poem recital. Instead, that day signaled the conclusion of my old life.

Conflict has stolen countless things. But the toughest sacrifice of all is learning, because without it, our prospects disappear.

Now I dwell alongside my mother and father, siblings and female sibling in a crowded shelter in al-Mawasi. The tent walls sway with breezes, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We line up for sustenance and drinks. Power is imaginary and personal space is absent. Aspiration appears brittle.

At darkness, I observe the stars through the holes of my temporary home and question if my friends see the same sky. Some reach out when they can, saying they long for education and have kept their former exercise books; like valuables from a bygone era. I feel remorseful because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once aspired to pursuing pedagogy to help Gaza’s children study, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I aim for being a writer – to compose, to communicate and to reveal the world what it means to be a child in Gaza. I want to tell our stories of anxiety and deprivation, but also courage. Because even amid these conditions, amid death and ruins, our voices refuse to be silent.

When online access exists, I try to study via the web. Sometimes, I go to a tiny space where volunteers instruct us mathematics and language. The lessons are short – the electricity cuts out or the bombing resumes but in those moments, I sense being. I recall who I was: the student who loved numbers and poems, who believed knowledge could alter reality.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our dwellings, schools and families. I lost my uncle, his spouse, and their offspring. I said goodbye to my beautiful city, Rafah, which is merely debris now. But the most painful deprivation of all is learning, because without it, our prospects disappear.

To the world, I say this: keep our hopes alive. We seek no sympathy, we want action. The youth are entitled to books, schools and security. Schooling is not an extravagance, it is a basic right. Gaza is not merely devastation; it is minors who continue to aspire beneath the drones at evening. It is my account and I will keep drafting, even if the sole items remaining is a damaged writing tool and a scrap of damaged material.

'Students ask: "Teacher, are you safe?"'.

An educator, forty, instructor in al-Bureij camp

I have been teaching in the region for over ten years. Initially in Khan Younis, then in another location, and presently in this refugee settlement in the heart of the region. Before the war started, I regularly instructed several sets of about fourty pupils per class, hundreds of eager students enthusiastic about knowledge.

Instructing them was my mission and happiness in existence, and I still remember the sparkle in a pupil's gaze when a concept was understood; the kind of moment every educator cherishes.

I always believed learning should be dynamic. My learning environment was a area of play, aesthetics, and motion. We designed geographical illustrations, performed past occurrences, and converted teaching into tales.

Laughter always occupied the area as inquisitiveness displaced anxiety. Yes, even in earlier times, local youth were always scared. My teaching space was a protected zone but after that day, all was altered.

My school became a safe haven for households running from the bombs. Shortly after, it was attacked and totally demolished. There are almost no schools remaining intact in Gaza now. For this period, nothing has been normal. The conflict has shattered every aspect of our existence: safety, dwellings, learning places, dreams. Fear and grief are ever-present realities.

A significant number of my students are now deceased – minors who spoke of becoming physicians, painters, and educators. They were denied even the entitlement to survival. Those who survive endure starvation, displacement and exhaustion – and nevertheless, they still cling to the thirst for knowledge.

At times, when the internet enables, I hear from a small number of them. They write inquiring: “How are you, instructor?” We share short messages, short lessons, tiny sparks of interaction amid the disorder. They question if circumstances will ever revert to standard. I state to them I don’t know.

Throughout Gaza, teachers, aid workers and organizations endeavor education in any feasible location: in temporary structures, damaged classrooms, or packed refuges. Learning has become an gesture of resistance, a way to declare: “We persist.” And provided that we continue learning, we will remain.

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