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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

Juwayriya Adwan, twelve, Khan Younis

For the past two years since I entered a learning environment. That long since I heard the school chime at my former school, sat at my desk and participated actively during my beloved lesson. Occasionally I still clearly recall the sounds and smells: powder from the board, pencil shavings, joyful sounds in corridors. But my learning place was destroyed; it was struck soon after the hostilities erupted. My books were burned, and several classmates lost.

I was in fifth grade on 7 October: the final day I entered the school building. That beginning of the day, warning alarms blared through the corridors. Some pupils sobbed, others gripped each other. Our educator attempted reassurance, but even she sounded shaky. I remember hoping for a routine day; lessons, recess, a poem recital. Instead, that day signaled the conclusion of my former reality.

The war has taken so much. But the most painful deprivation of all is education, because without it, our prospects disappear.

Now I dwell alongside my mother and father, siblings and female sibling in a packed refuge in Khan Younis. The shelter coverings sway with breezes, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We queue for sustenance and drinks. Power is imaginary and personal space is absent. Optimism seems delicate.

At night, I look up at the night lights through the openings of my shelter and wonder if my friends see the same sky. Some message me when they can, stating they long for education and have preserved their old notebooks; like valuables from a bygone era. I feel guilty because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once envisioned becoming a teacher to assist local youth acquire knowledge, even when life was hard. Now I aim for being a writer – to compose, to speak and to demonstrate the world what it represents to be a young person in the Strip. I want to share our experiences of anxiety and deprivation, but also fortitude. Because even here, amid fatality and debris, our expressions persist.

When there’s some internet, I endeavor to educate myself digitally. Other times, I go to a small tent where volunteers teach us mathematics and language. The sessions are brief – the energy supply stops or the airstrikes begin again but in these instances, I experience vitality. I recall who I was: the student who loved numbers and poems, who thought knowledge could alter reality.

The war has taken so much; our dwellings, educational institutions and kin. I mourned my family member, his partner, and their children. I lost my beautiful city, that southern city, which is only ruins now. But the most painful deprivation of all is education, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the global audience, I express this: keep our hopes alive. We seek no sympathy, we require steps. Gaza’s children are entitled to literature, educational facilities and safety. Learning is not optional, it is a basic right. Gaza is not just ruins; it is youth who continue to aspire amid unmanned aircraft at night. It is my account and I will continue writing, even if all I have left is a damaged writing tool and a fragment of ripped sheet.

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

An educator, 40, instructor in a refugee camp

I have been instructing in this area for a substantial period. Originally in that urban area, then in another location, and now in the central camp in the heart of the region. Before the war started, I used to teach several sets of about fourty pupils per class, almost two hundred forty individuals eager to learn.

Teaching them was my purpose and joy in existence, and I still recollect the twinkle in a pupil's gaze when a knowledge was acquired; the kind of moment every instructor lives for.

I always thought learning should be dynamic. My teaching space was a area of amusement, creativity, and movement. We painted maps, acted out historical events, and converted teaching into tales.

Joy always filled the room as curiosity replaced fear. Yes, even prior to conflict, young residents were always frightened. My classroom was a protected zone but after the seventh, all was altered.

My learning center became a refuge for families escaping the bombs. Shortly after, it was targeted and completely destroyed. There are almost no educational facilities remaining intact in the region now. For 24 months, everything has been abnormal. The hostilities has broken every facet of our reality: safety, residences, schools, hopes. Anxiety and sorrow are perpetual experiences.

A significant number of my pupils are now dead – children who spoke of dreaming of physicians, artists, and teachers. They were deprived even the right to exist. Those who remain experience starvation, relocation and weariness – and however, they still maintain the will to learn.

Occasionally, when the internet enables, I hear from a handful of them. They message inquiring: “Are you safe, educator?” We communicate brief words, short lessons, minor flashes of connection amid the turmoil. They inquire if situations will ever return to usual. I state to them I don’t know.

All over the region, instructors, volunteers and organizations endeavor education in all available spaces: in tents, damaged classrooms, or crowded shelters. Learning has become an gesture of resistance, a way to say: “We are still here.” And as long as we persist in education, we will endure.

A significant number of us are also guardians. I am a guardian of {three|several