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'We seek action, not sympathy'.

A young student, twelve, Khan Younis

For the past 24 months since I stepped into a real classroom. That long since I listened to the school chime at my former school, took my seat and answered questions during my beloved lesson. Sometimes I still distinctly recollect the auditory and olfactory sensations: chalk dust, sharpener leftovers, cheerful echoes. But my school no longer exists; it was targeted soon after the war began. My learning materials incinerated, and several classmates lost.

I was in fifth grade on the seventh of October: the concluding day I went to school. That early hours, alert signals sounded through the halls. Some children cried, others held hands tightly. Our educator attempted reassurance, but even she sounded shaky. I remember hoping for a routine day; instruction, break time, a literary performance. Instead, that day became the last page of my former reality.

Conflict has stolen countless things. But the toughest sacrifice of all is education, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

Now I dwell alongside my parents, male relatives and sister in a packed refuge in this coastal area. The temporary partitions flap in the wind, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We queue for water and food. Energy access is fantasy and privacy doesn’t exist. Optimism seems delicate.

At darkness, I look up at the celestial bodies through the openings of my temporary home and ponder if my companions see the identical heavens. Some reach out when they manage, expressing they long for education and have kept their former exercise books; like relics of a vanished time. I feel ashamed because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once dreamed of becoming a teacher to assist local youth learn, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I hope for being a reporter – to write, to speak and to show the world what it signifies to be a minor in this region. I want to narrate our accounts of anxiety and deprivation, but also bravery. Because even in this place, amid death and ruins, our expressions persist.

When online access exists, I attempt learning via the web. Other times, I attend a small tent where aid workers educate us math and Arabic. The instruction is limited – the electricity cuts out or the attacks recommence but in those moments, I feel alive. I recall who I was: the young woman who loved numbers and poems, who thought learning could change the world.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our residences, schools and relatives. I mourned my paternal relative, his spouse, and their young ones. I said goodbye to my beautiful city, that southern city, which is nothing but rubble now. But the hardest loss of all is schooling, because without it, our prospects disappear.

To the international community, I express this: preserve our aspirations. We don’t want pity, we want action. Young residents are entitled to books, educational facilities and protection. Schooling is not optional, it is a essential privilege. Gaza is not merely devastation; it is minors who still dream beneath the drones at night. It is my account and I will persist in composing, even if all I have left is a damaged writing tool and a scrap of damaged material.

'Pupils inquire: "Are you alright, educator?"'.

Naglaa Weshah, 40, teacher in a refugee camp

I have been educating in this area for over ten years. Initially in a southern city, then in another location, and presently in this refugee settlement in the middle of the territory. Before the war started, I used to teach several sets of about dozens of learners, hundreds of eager students eager to learn.

Teaching them was my purpose and joy in life, and I still remember the sparkle in a student’s eyes when a knowledge was acquired; the type of instance every instructor cherishes.

I always thought education should be vibrant. My learning environment was a area of play, aesthetics, and motion. We created cartographic art, dramatized bygone episodes, and converted teaching into tales.

Laughter always occupied the area as inquisitiveness substituted apprehension. Certainly, even before the war, children in Gaza were always afraid. My teaching space was a protected zone but after the seventh, everything changed.

My school became a safe haven for families fleeing the bombs. Not long later, it was struck and totally demolished. There are hardly any schools left standing in the region now. For two years, everything has been abnormal. The conflict has destroyed every aspect of our existence: safety, residences, educational centers, hopes. Apprehension and mourning are ever-present realities.

Many of my students are now dead – youth who spoke of aspiring to be physicians, painters, and instructors. They were deprived even the entitlement to survival. Those who survive endure hunger, displacement and fatigue – and however, they still hold onto the will to learn.

At times, when the connectivity enables, I hear from a handful of them. They contact questioning: “How are you, educator?” We share brief words, short lessons, tiny sparks of interaction amid the turmoil. They ask if things will ever go back to normal. I state to them I don’t know.

Across the region, educators, helpers and organizations attempt instruction in all available spaces: in tents, ruined educational areas, or packed refuges. Schooling has become an act of defiance, a way to declare: “We are still here.” And so long as we keep acquiring knowledge, we will endure.

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