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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

Juwayriya Adwan, twelve, Khan Younis

It has been two years since I entered a real classroom. That long since I heard the start-of-class signal at the institution I attended, occupied my place and participated actively during my preferred subject. Occasionally I still vividly remember the sounds and smells: powder from the board, sharpener leftovers, joyful sounds in corridors. But my learning place was destroyed; it was struck soon after the hostilities erupted. My textbooks turned to ash, and several classmates lost.

I was in the fifth year on 7 October: the final day I attended classes. That morning, warning alarms blared through the passageways. Some children cried, others held hands tightly. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even she sounded shaky. I remember wishing for a ordinary day; lessons, recess, a verse presentation. Instead, that day signaled the conclusion of my former reality.

Hostilities have claimed innumerable aspects. But the toughest sacrifice of all is schooling, because without it, our prospects disappear.

Now I live with my parents, male relatives and female sibling in a congested safe space in this coastal area. The tent walls move with air currents, providing no climate control. We wait in line for nourishment and hydration. Power is imaginary and privacy doesn’t exist. Optimism seems delicate.

At darkness, I observe the celestial bodies through the openings of my tent and ponder if my companions see the comparable vista. Some message me when they can, expressing they yearn for classes and have kept their former exercise books; like treasures from a lost world. I feel remorseful because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once dreamed of becoming a teacher to help young residents acquire knowledge, even when existence was challenging. Now I hope for being a journalist – to compose, to speak and to demonstrate the world what it represents to be a young person in this region. I want to narrate our accounts of anxiety and deprivation, but also bravery. Because even here, amid loss and destruction, our voices refuse to be silent.

When there’s some internet, I try to study online. Other times, I go to a modest shelter where aid workers educate us mathematics and language. The lessons are short – the electricity cuts out or the bombing resumes but in these instances, I feel alive. I recall who I was: the girl who cherished arithmetic and verse, who thought learning could change the world.

The war has taken so much; our homes, schools and families. I grieved for my paternal relative, his spouse, and their young ones. I said goodbye to my beautiful city, my previous home, which is merely debris now. But the toughest sacrifice of all is learning, because without it, our prospects disappear.

To the global audience, I say this: preserve our aspirations. We seek no sympathy, we want action. The youth are entitled to texts, educational facilities and safety. Education is not a luxury, it is a fundamental entitlement. The territory is not only destruction; it is minors who persist in hoping beneath the drones at darkness. It is my story and I will keep drafting, even if the sole items remaining is a broken pencil and a scrap of damaged material.

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

Naglaa Weshah, forty, instructor in central Gaza

I have been instructing in the region for more than a decade. First in that urban area, then in another location, and now in this refugee settlement in the heart of the region. Prior to hostilities, I used to teach multiple groups of about 40 students each, almost two hundred forty individuals eager to learn.

Teaching them was my purpose and joy in life, and I still recall the sparkle in a learner's look when a knowledge was acquired; the sort of occasion every educator strives for.

I always believed learning should be full of life. My learning environment was a area of amusement, creativity, and movement. We designed geographical illustrations, performed past occurrences, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Joy always occupied the area as inquisitiveness substituted anxiety. Certainly, even in earlier times, young residents were always frightened. My teaching space was a protected zone but after the seventh, all was altered.

My educational institution became a shelter for relatives escaping the aerial attacks. Not long later, it was attacked and totally demolished. There are hardly any schools left standing in Gaza now. For two years, all has been unusual. The hostilities has shattered every aspect of our lives: safety, residences, schools, dreams. Apprehension and mourning are perpetual experiences.

Numerous of my pupils are now dead – children who spoke of becoming doctors, creatives, and educators. They were denied even the right to exist. Those who survive live with hunger, relocation and weariness – and yet, they still cling to the thirst for knowledge.

At times, when the internet permits, I receive messages from a handful of them. They write asking: “How are you, teacher?” We share brief words, abbreviated teaching, small glimmers of interaction amid the chaos. They question if circumstances will ever revert to standard. I state to them I am uncertain.

Throughout the region, instructors, volunteers and non-profits endeavor education in any feasible location: in shelters, destroyed learning spaces, or congested safe zones. Education has become an act of defiance, a way to say: “We persist.” And as long as we continue learning, we will remain.

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