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'Our plea is for action, not compassion'.

A young student, 12, a temporary shelter

It has been two years since I was last inside a learning environment. That long since I heard the start-of-class signal at my former school, sat at my desk and participated actively during my preferred subject. Sometimes I still clearly recall the familiar scents and noises: powder from the board, pencil shavings, cheerful echoes. But my school no longer exists; it was targeted soon after the conflict started. My textbooks turned to ash, and some of my friends killed.

I was in fifth grade on that fateful day: the concluding day I attended classes. That beginning of the day, warning alarms sounded through the passageways. Some students wept, others held hands tightly. Our educator attempted reassurance, but even her tone wavered. I remember longing for a normal day; teaching, intermission, a poem recital. Instead, that day became the last page of my old life.

Conflict has stolen countless things. But the toughest sacrifice of all is education, because that is the loss of the future itself.

Now I reside with my mother and father, siblings and sister in a congested safe space in Khan Younis. The temporary partitions flap in the wind, providing no climate control. We line up for nourishment and hydration. Power is imaginary and seclusion is unavailable. Aspiration appears brittle.

At night, I look up at the night lights through the holes of my temporary home and question if my companions see the identical heavens. Some message me when they can, expressing they yearn for classes and have retained their old notebooks; like relics of a vanished time. I feel guilty because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once aspired to becoming a teacher to help Gaza’s children acquire knowledge, even when life was hard. Now I hope for being a journalist – to write, to talk and to demonstrate the world what it means to be a child in the Strip. I want to tell our stories of anxiety and deprivation, but also bravery. Because even in this place, amid fatality and debris, our words continue.

When online access exists, I try to study digitally. On other occasions, I visit a small tent where volunteers instruct us math and Arabic. The lessons are short – the power fails or the airstrikes begin again but in these instances, I experience vitality. I remember who I was: the young woman who cherished arithmetic and verse, who thought education could transform society.

Hostilities have stolen countless aspects; our dwellings, educational institutions and kin. I grieved for my paternal relative, his wife, and their children. I lost my cherished hometown, my previous home, which is nothing but rubble now. But the hardest loss of all is learning, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the international community, I express this: don’t let our dreams die. We don’t want pity, we want action. The youth are entitled to literature, learning environments and safety. Education is not an extravagance, it is a essential privilege. This region is not only destruction; it is minors who persist in hoping under aerial surveillance at evening. It is my story and I will continue writing, even if all I have left is a damaged writing tool and a scrap of damaged material.

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

Naglaa Weshah, 40, instructor in a refugee camp

I have been teaching in this area for more than a decade. First in Khan Younis, then in a different town, and currently in the central camp in the central Gaza Strip. In pre-conflict times, I regularly instructed six classes of about dozens of learners, nearly 240 young minds keen on education.

Teaching them was my vocation and delight in life, and I still remember the gleam in a learner's look when a concept was understood; the type of instance every educator strives for.

I always believed instruction should be full of life. My classroom was a zone of amusement, art, and motion. We painted maps, performed past occurrences, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Joy always permeated the space as inquisitiveness replaced apprehension. Certainly, even before the war, children in Gaza were always afraid. My learning environment was a protected zone but after the seventh, the situation transformed.

My educational institution became a refuge for families running from the aerial attacks. Not long later, it was targeted and entirely ruined. There are very few schools still erect in Gaza now. For 24 months, nothing has been normal. The conflict has destroyed every part of our reality: protection, homes, schools, aspirations. Anxiety and sorrow are perpetual experiences.

Numerous of my pupils are now deceased – youth who mentioned becoming physicians, creatives, and educators. They were deprived even the right to exist. Those who are still here live with starvation, relocation and exhaustion – and however, they still hold onto the thirst for knowledge.

At times, when the internet allows, I receive messages from a few of them. They message inquiring: “How are you, instructor?” We exchange brief words, abbreviated teaching, tiny sparks of contact amid the chaos. They ask if situations will ever revert to standard. I tell them I am uncertain.

All over Gaza, teachers, helpers and charities attempt instruction wherever possible: in tents, damaged classrooms, or packed refuges. Education has become an gesture of resistance, a way to say: “We are still here.” And as long as we continue learning, we will persist.

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