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'We seek action, not sympathy'.

A young student, twelve, Khan Younis

For the past 24 months since I stepped into a real classroom. Two years since I heard the school chime at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, took my seat and raised my hand during my favourite class. Sometimes I still clearly recall the familiar scents and noises: chalk dust, wooden scraps, joyful sounds in corridors. But my educational institution is gone; it was struck shortly after the hostilities erupted. My books were burned, and companions perished.

I was in fifth grade on the seventh of October: the concluding day I attended classes. That early hours, air raid sirens screamed through the halls. Some children cried, others gripped each other. Our instructor sought to soothe, but even she sounded shaky. I remember wishing for a ordinary day; teaching, intermission, a poem recital. Instead, that day became the last page of my old life.

Hostilities have claimed innumerable aspects. But the most painful deprivation of all is schooling, because without it, our prospects disappear.

Now I live with my guardians, siblings and female sibling in a crowded shelter in this coastal area. The shelter coverings sway with breezes, failing to insulate. We queue for nourishment and hydration. Power is imaginary and personal space is absent. Hope feels fragile.

At night, I look up at the stars through the openings of my shelter and question if my peers see the identical heavens. Some reach out when they are able, stating they yearn for classes and have retained their former exercise books; like valuables from a bygone era. I feel remorseful because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once envisioned entering the education field to support young residents study, even when life was hard. Now I aim for being a writer – to compose, to speak and to show the world what it represents to be a child in the Strip. I want to narrate our accounts of anxiety and deprivation, but also courage. Because even amid these conditions, amid fatality and debris, our words continue.

When online access exists, I attempt learning via the web. On other occasions, I visit a tiny space where aid workers teach us math and Arabic. The lessons are short – the energy supply stops or the bombing resumes but in those moments, I experience vitality. I recollect who I was: the girl who adored mathematics and poetry, who believed learning could change the world.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our dwellings, educational institutions and kin. I mourned my paternal relative, his spouse, and their offspring. I said goodbye to my beloved urban area, that southern city, which is nothing but rubble now. But the most painful deprivation of all is schooling, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the international community, I express this: don’t let our dreams die. Compassion isn't enough, we demand measures. Gaza’s children deserve texts, learning environments and protection. Education is not a luxury, it is a fundamental entitlement. Gaza is not only destruction; it is children who continue to aspire beneath the drones at darkness. It is my narrative and I will keep drafting, even if the sole items remaining is a broken pencil and a piece of torn paper.

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

An educator, forty, teacher in a refugee camp

I have been instructing in the region for a substantial period. Initially in a southern city, then in Deir al-Balah, and currently in the central camp in the middle of the territory. Prior to hostilities, I used to teach several sets of about 40 students each, hundreds of eager students eager to learn.

Teaching them was my mission and happiness in life, and I still remember the gleam in a student’s eyes when a knowledge was acquired; the type of instance every educator cherishes.

I always was convinced instruction should be dynamic. My classroom was a space of play, aesthetics, and movement. We designed geographical illustrations, acted out historical events, and turned lessons into stories.

Laughter always occupied the area as inquisitiveness replaced anxiety. Indeed, even before the war, local youth were always scared. My classroom was a secure location but after the seventh, everything changed.

My learning center became a shelter for families fleeing the aerial attacks. Shortly after, it was attacked and entirely ruined. There are almost no schools remaining intact in the region now. For this period, all has been unusual. The conflict has broken every aspect of our reality: protection, residences, schools, hopes. Anxiety and sorrow are ever-present realities.

Numerous of my learners are now dead – youth who mentioned becoming medical professionals, artists, and instructors. They were deprived even the right to exist. Those who survive live with hunger, relocation and exhaustion – and yet, they still hold onto the thirst for knowledge.

At times, when the internet allows, I get in touch with a few of them. They message asking: “How are you, teacher?” We exchange short messages, abbreviated teaching, small glimmers of interaction amid the chaos. They ask if circumstances will ever revert to standard. I state to them I am uncertain.

Throughout this territory, educators, helpers and charities try to teach in any feasible location: in shelters, damaged classrooms, or congested safe zones. Schooling has become an act of defiance, a way to declare: “We persist.” And provided that we continue learning, we will remain.

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