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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

Juwayriya Adwan, 12, al-Mawasi

It has been 24 months since I was last inside a proper school. Two years since I heard the start-of-class signal at the institution I attended, sat at my desk and participated actively during my favourite class. Occasionally I still vividly remember the familiar scents and noises: powder from the board, sharpener leftovers, cheerful echoes. But my educational institution is gone; it was targeted not long after the hostilities erupted. My books were burned, and companions perished.

I was in fifth grade on that fateful day: the last day I attended classes. That beginning of the day, alert signals sounded through the passageways. Some pupils sobbed, others clasped palms firmly. Our instructor sought to soothe, but even she sounded shaky. I remember hoping for a ordinary day; teaching, intermission, a literary performance. Instead, that day became the last page of my former reality.

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

Now I live with my mother and father, two brothers and female sibling in a crowded shelter in Khan Younis. The tent walls move with air currents, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We wait in line for sustenance and drinks. Power is imaginary and personal space is absent. Hope feels fragile.

At evening, I gaze toward the celestial bodies through the gaps of my shelter and question if my companions see the identical heavens. Some reach out when they manage, stating they long for education and have preserved their previous journals; like treasures from a lost world. I feel ashamed because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once envisioned pursuing pedagogy to help local youth acquire knowledge, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I dream of being a reporter – to compose, to talk and to show the world what it signifies to be a young person in this region. I want to tell our stories of fear and hunger, but also bravery. Because even in this place, amid loss and destruction, our voices refuse to be silent.

When there’s some internet, I try to study online. On other occasions, I visit a small tent where aid workers instruct us mathematics and language. The lessons are short – the electricity cuts out or the airstrikes begin again but in these instances, I experience vitality. I recall who I was: the girl who adored mathematics and poetry, who believed learning could change the world.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our homes, educational institutions and relatives. I grieved for my paternal relative, his wife, and their offspring. I said goodbye to my beloved urban area, Rafah, which is merely debris now. But the most painful deprivation of all is education, 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 demand measures. Young residents merit texts, learning environments and safety. Schooling is not an extravagance, it is a essential privilege. The territory is not just ruins; it is children who persist in hoping under aerial surveillance at night. It is my account and I will continue writing, even if all I have left is a broken pencil and a scrap of damaged material.

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

An educator, forty, instructor in a refugee camp

I have been educating in the region for more than a decade. Initially in a southern city, then in Deir al-Balah, and currently in the central camp in the middle of the territory. Before the war started, I used to teach multiple groups of about fourty pupils per class, nearly 240 young minds keen on education.

Educating them was my vocation and delight in life, and I still recall the gleam in a student’s eyes when a concept was understood; the sort of occasion every teacher lives for.

I always believed learning should be vibrant. My classroom was a zone of play, aesthetics, and motion. We designed geographical illustrations, dramatized bygone episodes, and turned lessons into stories.

Merriment always occupied the area as curiosity displaced apprehension. Yes, even prior to conflict, local youth were always scared. My teaching space was a protected zone but after the seventh, everything changed.

My educational institution became a refuge for families running from the explosives. Not long later, it was attacked and totally demolished. There are very few learning institutions still erect in the region now. For 24 months, everything has been abnormal. The war has broken every aspect of our lives: security, dwellings, learning places, hopes. Anxiety and sorrow are perpetual experiences.

Numerous of my students are now deceased – children who mentioned aspiring to be medical professionals, creatives, and educators. They were denied even the entitlement to survival. Those who survive live with hunger, relocation and exhaustion – and yet, they still maintain the thirst for knowledge.

Sometimes, when the connectivity enables, I receive messages from a small number of them. They write inquiring: “Are you safe, educator?” We exchange concise phrases, short lessons, tiny sparks of connection amid the turmoil. They ask if circumstances will ever revert to standard. I state to them I have no answer.

All over the region, educators, aid workers and charities attempt instruction wherever possible: in shelters, damaged classrooms, or crowded shelters. Education has become an gesture of resistance, a way to declare: “We persist.” And as long as we continue learning, we will endure.

Many of us are also guardians. I am a guardian of {three|several