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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

Juwayriya Adwan, 12, a temporary shelter

For the past 24 months 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 preferred subject. Occasionally I still vividly remember the sounds and smells: chalk dust, pencil shavings, cheerful echoes. But my educational institution is gone; it was bombed soon after the war began. My books were burned, and companions perished.

I was in the fifth year on that fateful day: the last day I entered the school building. That beginning of the day, warning alarms screamed through the passageways. Some students wept, others held hands tightly. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even her tone wavered. I remember hoping for a ordinary day; teaching, recess, a poem recital. Instead, that day marked the end of my old life.

The war has taken so much. But the most painful deprivation of all is schooling, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

Now I reside with my mother and father, male relatives and sister in a packed refuge in al-Mawasi. The shelter coverings sway with breezes, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We wait in line for water and food. Electricity is a dream and privacy doesn’t exist. Aspiration appears brittle.

At evening, I look up at the stars through the openings of my temporary home and question if my companions see the comparable vista. Some message me when they can, expressing they long for education and have retained their former exercise books; like relics of a vanished time. I feel remorseful because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once envisioned becoming a teacher to support young residents study, even when life was hard. Now I hope for being a reporter – to write, to communicate and to show the world what it means to be a young person in Gaza. I want to narrate our accounts of apprehension and need, but also courage. Because even here, amid fatality and debris, our words continue.

When online access exists, I try to study via the web. Sometimes, I go to a tiny space where volunteers teach us mathematics and language. The sessions are brief – the energy supply stops or the bombing resumes but in these instances, I sense being. I recall who I was: the young woman who cherished arithmetic and verse, who believed knowledge could alter reality.

The war has taken so much; our residences, educational institutions and relatives. I mourned my uncle, his wife, and their young ones. I forfeited my beautiful city, Rafah, which is merely debris now. But the most painful deprivation of all is learning, because without it, our prospects disappear.

To the international community, I state this: keep our hopes alive. We seek no sympathy, we want action. Gaza’s children are entitled to books, schools and safety. Education is not a luxury, it is a fundamental entitlement. Gaza is not merely devastation; it is children who continue to aspire amid unmanned aircraft at night. It is my account and I will persist in composing, even if my only possessions is a damaged writing tool and a scrap of damaged material.

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

An educator, forty, teacher in central Gaza

I have been instructing in Gaza for over ten years. Originally in a southern city, then in another location, and presently in the central camp in the central Gaza Strip. Before the war started, I regularly instructed six classes of about dozens of learners, nearly 240 young minds eager to learn.

Educating them was my mission and happiness in reality, and I still recall the twinkle in a learner's look when a knowledge was acquired; the type of instance every educator cherishes.

I always was convinced learning should be dynamic. My learning environment was a zone of amusement, creativity, and movement. We designed geographical illustrations, performed past occurrences, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Joy always permeated the space as interest displaced fear. Certainly, even prior to conflict, children in Gaza were always frightened. My learning environment was a secure location but after the seventh, the situation transformed.

My educational institution became a refuge for families running from the bombs. Shortly after, it was struck and totally demolished. There are almost no schools remaining intact in this area now. For this period, everything has been abnormal. The hostilities has shattered every facet of our existence: protection, dwellings, educational centers, aspirations. Anxiety and sorrow are constant companions.

Many of my learners are now lost – children who spoke of becoming medical professionals, creatives, and instructors. They were denied even the right to exist. Those who are still here experience malnutrition, displacement and exhaustion – and however, they still maintain the thirst for knowledge.

Occasionally, when the connectivity enables, I hear from a few of them. They write inquiring: “Are you safe, teacher?” We exchange concise phrases, miniature instruction, minor flashes of connection amid the turmoil. They question if things will ever revert to standard. I tell them I have no answer.

Across the region, teachers, aid workers and organizations endeavor education in any feasible location: in temporary structures, destroyed learning spaces, or crowded shelters. Schooling has become an gesture of resistance, a way to say: “Our presence continues.” And as long as we continue learning, we will persist.

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