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'We seek action, not sympathy'.

Juwayriya Adwan, twelve, al-Mawasi

For the past 24 months since I was last inside a real classroom. Two years since I listened to the school chime at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, sat at my desk and answered questions during my preferred subject. At times I still clearly recall the auditory and olfactory sensations: powder from the board, sharpener leftovers, joyful sounds in corridors. But my educational institution is gone; it was bombed shortly after the conflict started. My books were burned, and some of my friends killed.

I was in fifth grade on that fateful day: the final day I entered the school building. That beginning of the day, warning alarms blared through the passageways. Some pupils sobbed, others held hands tightly. Our educator attempted reassurance, but even her tone wavered. I remember hoping for a normal day; instruction, intermission, a literary performance. Instead, that day marked the end of my former reality.

Hostilities have claimed innumerable aspects. But the hardest loss of all is learning, because that is the loss of the future itself.

Now I reside with my mother and father, male relatives and female sibling in a congested safe space in al-Mawasi. The temporary partitions sway with breezes, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We queue for nourishment and hydration. Electricity is a dream and seclusion is unavailable. Aspiration appears brittle.

At evening, I observe the stars through the gaps of my tent and wonder if my companions see the comparable vista. Some message me when they can, stating they yearn for classes and have retained their old notebooks; like relics of a vanished time. I feel remorseful because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once aspired to entering the education field to help Gaza’s children acquire knowledge, even when life was hard. Now I hope for being a reporter – to compose, to speak and to demonstrate the world what it signifies to be a minor in this region. I want to narrate our accounts of apprehension and need, but also fortitude. Because even amid these conditions, amid fatality and debris, our voices refuse to be silent.

When online access exists, I endeavor to educate myself digitally. Other times, I go to a small tent where volunteers instruct us math and Arabic. The lessons are short – the electricity cuts out or the bombing resumes but in such times, I feel alive. I remember who I was: the young woman who loved numbers and poems, who believed learning could change the world.

The war has taken so much; our residences, schools and kin. I grieved for my paternal relative, his spouse, and their children. I lost 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 global audience, I say this: preserve our aspirations. We don’t want pity, we want action. The youth deserve texts, educational facilities and security. Learning is not an extravagance, it is a basic right. The territory is not only destruction; it is children who still dream beneath the drones at evening. It is my narrative and I will continue writing, even if all I have left is a fractured utensil and a scrap of damaged material.

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

Naglaa Weshah, 40, teacher in a refugee camp

I have been teaching in this area for a substantial period. Originally in that urban area, then in another location, and presently in this refugee settlement in the middle of the territory. Before the war started, I typically educated six classes of about fourty pupils per class, almost two hundred forty individuals keen on education.

Instructing them was my mission and happiness in existence, and I still recollect the twinkle in a learner's look when a knowledge was acquired; the sort of occasion every educator strives for.

I always thought instruction should be dynamic. My learning environment was a space of play, aesthetics, and activity. We designed geographical illustrations, performed past occurrences, and converted teaching into tales.

Laughter always permeated the space as interest replaced apprehension. Yes, even in earlier times, children in Gaza were always scared. My teaching space was a place of safety but after that day, the situation transformed.

My learning center became a shelter for families escaping the bombs. Soon, it was targeted and totally demolished. There are very few schools left standing in the region now. For 24 months, all has been unusual. The hostilities has broken every part of our reality: security, dwellings, educational centers, aspirations. Apprehension and mourning are ever-present realities.

Numerous of my students are now deceased – children who spoke of becoming doctors, creatives, and instructors. They were deprived even the right to exist. Those who survive experience hunger, displacement and fatigue – and however, they still cling to the will to learn.

Sometimes, when the connectivity allows, I receive messages from a few of them. They message inquiring: “Are you safe, instructor?” We communicate short messages, short lessons, tiny sparks of contact amid the chaos. They inquire if things will ever revert to standard. I state to them I have no answer.

All over the region, instructors, volunteers and non-profits attempt instruction in all available spaces: in tents, damaged classrooms, or packed refuges. Education has become an act of defiance, a way to declare: “We persist.” And so long as we continue learning, we will persist.

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