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'We seek action, not sympathy'.

A young student, twelve, Khan Younis

It has been 24 months since I was last inside a real classroom. That long since I listened to the start-of-class signal at the institution I attended, occupied my place and participated actively during my beloved lesson. Occasionally I still distinctly recollect the auditory and olfactory sensations: chalk dust, pencil shavings, cheerful echoes. But my learning place was destroyed; it was targeted shortly after the hostilities erupted. My books were burned, and companions perished.

I was in fifth grade on the seventh of October: the last day I went to school. That morning, warning alarms screamed through the corridors. Some children cried, others clasped palms firmly. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even her voice trembled. I remember hoping for a routine day; teaching, recess, a poem recital. Instead, that day became the last page of my previous existence.

The war has taken so much. But the toughest sacrifice of all is learning, because that is the loss of the future itself.

Now I reside with my mother and father, two brothers and female sibling in a crowded shelter in al-Mawasi. The tent walls flap in the wind, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We queue for sustenance and drinks. Energy access is fantasy and seclusion is unavailable. Hope feels fragile.

At darkness, I gaze toward the night lights through the holes of my tent and wonder if my companions see the same sky. Some contact me when they can, expressing they yearn for classes and have preserved their old notebooks; like treasures from a lost world. I feel remorseful because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once aspired to becoming a teacher to support local youth learn, even when life was hard. Now I aim for being a journalist – to compose, to communicate and to show the world what it signifies to be a child in this region. I want to share our experiences of anxiety and deprivation, but also courage. Because even here, amid fatality and debris, our expressions persist.

When connectivity is available, I try to study digitally. Sometimes, I attend a modest shelter where helpers educate us arithmetic and Arabic. The instruction is limited – the energy supply stops or the airstrikes begin again but in these instances, I experience vitality. I recollect who I was: the girl who cherished arithmetic and verse, who thought education could transform society.

The war has taken so much; our homes, learning centers and kin. I grieved for my paternal relative, his partner, and their offspring. I forfeited my cherished hometown, that southern city, which is only ruins now. But the most painful deprivation of all is schooling, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

To the international community, I express this: don’t let our dreams die. Compassion isn't enough, we want action. Young residents merit literature, schools and safety. Schooling is not optional, it is a basic right. Gaza is not just ruins; it is youth who still dream amid unmanned aircraft at darkness. It is my story and I will keep drafting, even if the sole items remaining is a broken pencil and a piece of torn paper.

'Students ask: "Teacher, are you safe?"'.

An educator, 40, teacher in al-Bureij camp

I have been instructing in this area for more than a decade. First in that urban area, then in another location, and now in al-Bureij camp in the heart of the region. Before the war started, I typically educated six classes of about 40 students each, almost two hundred forty individuals eager to learn.

Educating them was my mission and happiness in life, and I still recollect the twinkle in a pupil's gaze when a new idea clicked; the type of instance every instructor strives for.

I always was convinced learning should be full of life. My teaching space was a zone of recreation, aesthetics, and motion. We painted maps, performed past occurrences, and converted teaching into tales.

Merriment always permeated the space as inquisitiveness substituted apprehension. Indeed, even in earlier times, young residents were always frightened. My classroom was a protected zone but after the seventh, the situation transformed.

My educational institution became a refuge for households fleeing the explosives. Not long later, it was attacked and entirely ruined. There are almost no learning institutions still erect in this area now. For this period, all has been unusual. The war has shattered every part of our reality: safety, residences, educational centers, hopes. Apprehension and mourning are ever-present realities.

A significant number of my pupils are now dead – children who spoke of dreaming of doctors, painters, and instructors. They were refused even the entitlement to survival. Those who survive live with hunger, eviction and fatigue – and however, they still maintain the thirst for knowledge.

Occasionally, when the internet allows, I receive messages from a small number of them. They message asking: “How are you, teacher?” We exchange concise phrases, short lessons, minor flashes of interaction amid the turmoil. They ask if circumstances will ever return to usual. I inform them I am uncertain.

Across this territory, instructors, volunteers and non-profits endeavor education in all available spaces: in tents, ruined educational areas, or congested safe zones. Learning has become an gesture of resistance, a way to declare: “We persist.” And so long as we continue learning, we will endure.

Numerous of us are also parents. I am a mother of {three|several