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'Our plea is for action, not compassion'.

Juwayriya Adwan, twelve, Khan Younis

For the past 24 months since I was last inside a real classroom. Two years since I listened to the school chime at the institution I attended, sat at my desk and raised my hand during my beloved lesson. Sometimes I still vividly remember the auditory and olfactory sensations: powder from the board, wooden scraps, joyful sounds in corridors. But my learning place was destroyed; it was bombed shortly after the hostilities erupted. My books were burned, and some of my friends killed.

I was in the fifth year on that fateful day: the concluding day I attended classes. That beginning of the day, air raid sirens sounded through the passageways. Some children cried, others gripped each other. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even she sounded shaky. I remember wishing for a normal day; teaching, intermission, a verse presentation. Instead, that day marked the end of my former reality.

Hostilities have claimed innumerable aspects. But the hardest loss of all is learning, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

Now I live with my mother and father, male relatives and female sibling in a crowded shelter in this coastal area. The shelter coverings flap in the wind, providing no climate control. We queue for sustenance and drinks. Power is imaginary and seclusion is unavailable. Optimism seems delicate.

At evening, I gaze toward the night lights through the gaps of my temporary home and wonder if my peers see the identical heavens. Some message me when they can, expressing they long for education and have preserved their former exercise books; like relics of a vanished time. I feel guilty because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once aspired to pursuing pedagogy to assist young residents learn, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I aim for being a reporter – to draft, to talk and to show the world what it represents to be a child in the Strip. I want to narrate our accounts of fear and hunger, but also bravery. Because even amid these conditions, amid fatality and debris, our words continue.

When connectivity is available, I attempt learning online. On other occasions, I visit a tiny space where volunteers teach us mathematics and language. The instruction is limited – the electricity cuts out or the attacks recommence but in such times, I experience vitality. I remember who I was: the student who loved numbers and poems, who was convinced education could transform society.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our homes, educational institutions and relatives. I mourned my family member, his partner, and their young ones. I said goodbye to my cherished hometown, Rafah, which is nothing but rubble now. But the hardest loss of all is schooling, because without it, our prospects disappear.

To the world, I say this: keep our hopes alive. We don’t want pity, we demand measures. Young residents merit books, learning environments and protection. Education is not an extravagance, it is a essential privilege. Gaza is not only destruction; it is minors who still dream amid unmanned aircraft at night. It is my account and I will continue writing, even if my only possessions is a fractured utensil and a fragment of ripped sheet.

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

An educator, 40, instructor in a refugee camp

I have been educating in Gaza for over ten years. Originally in Khan Younis, then in Deir al-Balah, and presently in al-Bureij camp in the middle of the territory. Prior to hostilities, I used to teach multiple groups of about fourty pupils per class, almost two hundred forty individuals keen on education.

Educating them was my purpose and joy in existence, and I still recall the gleam in a student’s eyes when a knowledge was acquired; the sort of occasion every educator strives for.

I always thought learning should be dynamic. My learning environment was a area of recreation, creativity, and movement. We created cartographic art, performed past occurrences, and turned lessons into stories.

Merriment always permeated the space as inquisitiveness substituted anxiety. Certainly, even before the war, young residents were always frightened. My learning environment was a secure location but after the seventh, everything changed.

My learning center became a safe haven for families running from the bombs. Soon, it was targeted and entirely ruined. There are hardly any schools remaining intact in Gaza now. For this period, nothing has been normal. The war has destroyed every part of our lives: protection, dwellings, schools, hopes. Apprehension and mourning are perpetual experiences.

Many of my pupils are now deceased – minors who spoke of aspiring to be doctors, creatives, and educators. They were deprived even the entitlement to survival. Those who remain experience starvation, displacement and exhaustion – and yet, they still cling to the will to learn.

At times, when the connectivity permits, I get in touch with a handful of them. They message asking: “How are you, educator?” We exchange brief words, abbreviated teaching, small glimmers of contact amid the disorder. They question if circumstances will ever go back to normal. I inform them I have no answer.

All over Gaza, instructors, volunteers and charities attempt instruction in any feasible location: in temporary structures, destroyed learning spaces, or crowded shelters. Learning has become an act of defiance, a way to declare: “Our presence continues.” And as long as we keep acquiring knowledge, we will remain.

A significant number of us are also parents. I am a parent of {three|several