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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

A young student, 12, al-Mawasi

It has been 24 months since I was last inside a proper school. Two years since I heard the morning bell at the institution I attended, took my seat and participated actively during my preferred subject. At times I still vividly remember the sounds and smells: chalk dust, pencil shavings, laughter echoing down the halls. But my school no longer exists; it was targeted shortly after the conflict started. My textbooks turned to ash, and companions perished.

I was in fifth grade on the seventh of October: the final day I went to school. That early hours, warning alarms screamed through the corridors. Some students wept, others gripped each other. Our instructor sought to soothe, but even her voice trembled. I remember longing for a normal day; instruction, break time, a verse presentation. Instead, that day signaled the conclusion of my previous existence.

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

Now I reside with my guardians, siblings and female sibling in a crowded shelter in Khan Younis. The temporary partitions flap in the wind, failing to insulate. We line up for water and food. Electricity is a dream and personal space is absent. Hope feels fragile.

At darkness, I look up at the night lights through the holes of my tent and question if my companions see the identical heavens. Some reach out when they manage, expressing they long for education and have preserved their old notebooks; like relics of a vanished time. I feel ashamed because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once dreamed of becoming a teacher to assist local youth acquire knowledge, even when existence was challenging. Now I hope for being a writer – to write, to talk and to show the world what it represents to be a minor in the Strip. I want to share our experiences of apprehension and need, but also bravery. Because even here, amid loss and destruction, our words continue.

When online access exists, I try to study online. On other occasions, I visit a modest shelter where volunteers educate us mathematics and language. The instruction is limited – the power fails or the airstrikes begin again but in those moments, I feel alive. I recollect who I was: the young woman who loved numbers and poems, who was convinced education could transform society.

The war has taken so much; our homes, educational institutions and families. I lost my family member, his partner, and their offspring. I lost my cherished hometown, my previous home, which is only ruins now. But the most painful deprivation of all is learning, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the international community, I state this: preserve our aspirations. We seek no sympathy, we require steps. The youth merit books, educational facilities and security. Learning is not a luxury, it is a basic right. The territory is not merely devastation; it is youth who still dream beneath the drones at night. It is my story and I will keep drafting, even if my only possessions is a damaged writing tool and a scrap of damaged material.

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

Naglaa Weshah, 40, teacher in a refugee camp

I have been instructing in the region for a substantial period. Originally in a southern city, then in a different town, and currently in this refugee settlement in the central Gaza Strip. Prior to hostilities, I typically educated six classes of about 40 students each, nearly 240 young minds keen on education.

Instructing them was my purpose and joy in existence, and I still remember the gleam in a learner's look when a concept was understood; the sort of occasion every teacher cherishes.

I always believed learning should be full of life. My learning environment was a zone of amusement, aesthetics, and activity. We created cartographic art, dramatized bygone episodes, and turned lessons into stories.

Merriment always filled the room as interest displaced anxiety. Indeed, even before the war, young residents were always scared. My teaching space was a place of safety but after the seventh, all was altered.

My educational institution became a safe haven for families fleeing the aerial attacks. Soon, it was attacked and completely destroyed. There are hardly any learning institutions still erect in this area now. For two years, everything has been abnormal. The hostilities has broken every part of our existence: safety, homes, learning places, hopes. Fear and grief are perpetual experiences.

Many of my students are now dead – minors who spoke of aspiring to be doctors, painters, and instructors. They were denied even the right to exist. Those who remain endure malnutrition, displacement and weariness – and however, they still cling to the desire for education.

Sometimes, when the connectivity permits, I receive messages from a handful of them. They contact asking: “Are you safe, educator?” We communicate short messages, abbreviated teaching, minor flashes of interaction amid the disorder. They inquire if things will ever return to usual. I inform them I have no answer.

All over the region, teachers, helpers and charities attempt instruction in any feasible location: in shelters, ruined educational areas, or congested safe zones. Education has become an act of defiance, a way to say: “We are still here.” And as long as we continue learning, we will remain.

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