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'Our plea is for action, not compassion'.

A young student, twelve, al-Mawasi

It has been two years since I stepped into a learning environment. That long since I listened to the school chime at the institution I attended, took my seat and answered questions during my beloved lesson. Sometimes I still clearly recall the sounds and smells: chalk dust, sharpener leftovers, joyful sounds in corridors. But my educational institution is gone; it was struck not long after the hostilities erupted. My textbooks turned to ash, and companions perished.

I was in elementary level on 7 October: the final day I went to school. That early hours, warning alarms sounded through the corridors. Some children cried, others held hands tightly. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even her voice trembled. I remember wishing for a routine day; instruction, break time, a poem recital. Instead, that day signaled the conclusion of my previous existence.

The war has taken so much. But the toughest sacrifice of all is learning, because that is the loss of the future itself.

Now I reside with my mother and father, siblings and female sibling in a crowded shelter in Khan Younis. The temporary partitions flap in the wind, providing no climate control. We wait in line for water and food. Energy access is fantasy and privacy doesn’t exist. Aspiration appears brittle.

At darkness, I look up at the stars through the openings of my tent and wonder if my peers see the same sky. Some reach out when they are able, stating they miss school and have retained their previous journals; like relics of a vanished time. I feel remorseful because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once envisioned pursuing pedagogy to assist local youth study, even when existence was challenging. Now I aim for being a reporter – to write, to speak and to show the world what it represents to be a minor in Gaza. I want to tell our stories of fear and hunger, but also courage. Because even in this place, amid loss and destruction, our voices refuse to be silent.

When online access exists, I attempt learning online. On other occasions, I visit a modest shelter where volunteers educate us math and Arabic. The lessons are short – the power fails or the airstrikes begin again but in those moments, I experience vitality. I remember who I was: the girl who loved numbers and poems, who thought learning could change the world.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our dwellings, educational institutions and relatives. I mourned my paternal relative, his wife, and their offspring. I forfeited my beloved urban area, Rafah, which is merely debris now. But the hardest loss of all is education, because without it, our prospects disappear.

To the international community, I say this: preserve our aspirations. Compassion isn't enough, we require steps. Gaza’s children deserve books, learning environments and safety. Education is not optional, it is a essential privilege. The territory is not only destruction; it is children who continue to aspire amid unmanned aircraft at darkness. It is my narrative and I will persist in composing, 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, teacher in central Gaza

I have been instructing in Gaza for more than a decade. First in a southern city, then in Deir al-Balah, and presently in al-Bureij camp in the middle of the territory. In pre-conflict times, I typically educated several sets of about fourty pupils per class, almost two hundred forty individuals keen on education.

Teaching them was my vocation and delight in life, and I still recollect the twinkle in a learner's look when a new idea clicked; the kind of moment every teacher strives for.

I always believed instruction should be dynamic. My learning environment was a area of play, aesthetics, and motion. We created cartographic art, dramatized bygone episodes, and turned lessons into stories.

Merriment always occupied the area as interest replaced fear. Certainly, even in earlier times, local youth were always frightened. My learning environment was a secure location but after that day, everything changed.

My educational institution became a shelter for families fleeing the aerial attacks. Not long later, it was targeted and totally demolished. There are hardly any educational facilities still erect in the region now. For 24 months, everything has been abnormal. The war has shattered every part of our existence: security, dwellings, educational centers, aspirations. Fear and grief are ever-present realities.

Many of my learners are now lost – children who mentioned aspiring to be medical professionals, artists, and educators. They were denied even the entitlement to survival. Those who are still here endure hunger, displacement and fatigue – and however, they still cling to the desire for education.

Occasionally, when the online access allows, I receive messages from a few of them. They write asking: “Are you safe, teacher?” We communicate concise phrases, short lessons, small glimmers of contact amid the disorder. They question if situations will ever return to usual. I state to them I don’t know.

Throughout Gaza, teachers, helpers and organizations attempt instruction in all available spaces: in temporary structures, damaged classrooms, or congested safe zones. Schooling has become an act of defiance, a way to declare: “Our presence continues.” And provided that we persist in education, we will persist.

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