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'Our plea is for action, not compassion'.

A young student, twelve, a temporary shelter

For the past two years since I entered a real classroom. That long since I heard the school chime at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, occupied my place and answered questions during my beloved lesson. At times I still distinctly recollect the auditory and olfactory sensations: chalk dust, pencil shavings, cheerful echoes. But my educational institution is gone; it was bombed soon after the conflict started. My textbooks turned to ash, and several classmates lost.

I was in elementary level on the seventh of October: the concluding day I attended classes. That morning, air raid sirens blared through the corridors. Some pupils sobbed, others gripped each other. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even her voice trembled. I remember wishing for a normal day; teaching, intermission, a poem recital. Instead, that day became the last page of my old life.

Hostilities have claimed innumerable aspects. But the hardest loss of all is learning, because without it, our prospects disappear.

Now I reside with my mother and father, male relatives and female sibling in a packed refuge in this coastal area. The shelter coverings move with air currents, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We queue for nourishment and hydration. Energy access is fantasy and seclusion is unavailable. Optimism seems delicate.

At darkness, I observe the celestial bodies through the openings of my shelter and ponder if my companions see the same sky. Some reach out when they can, expressing they yearn for classes and have preserved their previous journals; like valuables from a bygone era. I feel remorseful because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once aspired to pursuing pedagogy to help young residents learn, even when existence was challenging. Now I hope for being a journalist – to compose, to talk and to reveal the world what it represents to be a child in Gaza. I want to narrate our accounts of anxiety and deprivation, but also bravery. Because even amid these conditions, amid fatality and debris, our expressions persist.

When online access exists, I endeavor to educate myself online. On other occasions, I visit a tiny space where volunteers instruct us arithmetic and Arabic. The lessons are short – the power fails or the airstrikes begin again but in such times, I sense being. I recall who I was: the young woman who cherished arithmetic and verse, who believed learning could change the world.

The war has taken so much; our homes, educational institutions and families. I mourned my family member, his wife, and their children. I said goodbye to my cherished hometown, Rafah, which is only ruins now. But the toughest sacrifice of all is learning, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

To the international community, I state this: don’t let our dreams die. Compassion isn't enough, we require steps. The youth merit texts, schools and safety. Schooling is not a luxury, it is a fundamental entitlement. Gaza is not merely devastation; it is minors who continue to aspire beneath the drones at darkness. It is my story and I will persist in composing, even if my only possessions is a fractured utensil and a scrap of damaged material.

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

An educator, forty, teacher in a refugee camp

I have been instructing in Gaza for over ten years. First in a southern city, then in a different town, and currently in al-Bureij camp in the central Gaza Strip. Before the war started, I regularly instructed several sets of about fourty pupils per class, hundreds of eager students eager to learn.

Teaching them was my mission and happiness in existence, and I still recollect the gleam in a student’s eyes when a new idea clicked; the kind of moment every educator lives for.

I always thought education should be dynamic. My learning environment was a area of amusement, aesthetics, and movement. We created cartographic art, performed past occurrences, and converted teaching into tales.

Merriment always filled the room as curiosity substituted anxiety. Certainly, even before the war, local youth were always frightened. My teaching space was a secure location but after the seventh, the situation transformed.

My learning center became a safe haven for families running from the bombs. Shortly after, it was struck and totally demolished. There are almost no schools still erect in this area now. For this period, nothing has been normal. The hostilities has broken every aspect of our existence: protection, residences, schools, dreams. Fear and grief are ever-present realities.

Numerous of my learners are now deceased – youth who mentioned dreaming of physicians, creatives, and teachers. They were deprived even the privilege of living. Those who remain experience starvation, eviction and fatigue – and nevertheless, they still cling to the will to learn.

Sometimes, when the online access allows, I receive messages from a small number of them. They write inquiring: “How are you, teacher?” We exchange brief words, short lessons, small glimmers of interaction amid the turmoil. They ask if situations will ever revert to standard. I tell them I have no answer.

Throughout Gaza, teachers, aid workers and non-profits endeavor education wherever possible: in temporary structures, ruined educational areas, or packed refuges. Learning has become an act of defiance, a way to express: “We are still here.” And so long as we continue learning, we will endure.

A significant number of us are also caregivers. I am a mother of {three|several