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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

Juwayriya Adwan, 12, al-Mawasi

For the past two years since I stepped into a real classroom. That long since I heard the morning bell at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, sat at my desk and answered questions during my beloved lesson. Occasionally I still vividly remember the sounds and smells: chalk dust, pencil shavings, laughter echoing down the halls. But my school no longer exists; it was bombed shortly after the war began. My books were burned, and companions perished.

I was in fifth grade on the seventh of October: the final day I entered the school building. That early hours, warning alarms screamed through the passageways. Some students wept, others gripped each other. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even she sounded shaky. I remember hoping for a ordinary day; instruction, intermission, a verse presentation. Instead, that day marked the end of my old life.

The war has taken so much. But the toughest sacrifice of all is education, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

Now I live with my mother and father, siblings and sister in a packed refuge in this coastal area. The temporary partitions move with air currents, providing no climate control. We wait in line for water and food. Energy access is fantasy and seclusion is unavailable. Hope feels fragile.

At evening, I look up at the celestial bodies through the gaps of my shelter and ponder if my companions see the same sky. Some contact me when they manage, stating they miss school and have retained their previous journals; like treasures from a lost world. I feel ashamed because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once dreamed of becoming a teacher to help young residents acquire knowledge, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I aim for being a journalist – to write, to communicate and to show the world what it signifies to be a young person in this region. I want to narrate our accounts of anxiety and deprivation, but also bravery. Because even here, amid fatality and debris, our expressions persist.

When online access exists, I endeavor to educate myself online. Other times, I go to a small tent where volunteers teach us mathematics and language. The sessions are brief – the power fails or the attacks recommence but in such times, I sense being. I recall who I was: the girl who cherished arithmetic and verse, who thought knowledge could alter reality.

The war has taken so much; our homes, learning centers and families. I lost my family member, his wife, and their offspring. I lost my beloved urban area, Rafah, which is nothing but rubble now. But the most painful deprivation of all is schooling, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the world, I express this: don’t let our dreams die. Compassion isn't enough, we demand measures. Gaza’s children deserve literature, learning environments and protection. Learning is not optional, it is a essential privilege. This region is not just ruins; it is children who still dream under aerial surveillance at evening. It is my narrative and I will keep drafting, even if my only possessions is a damaged writing tool and a fragment of ripped sheet.

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

An educator, 40, instructor in central Gaza

I have been teaching in this area for more than a decade. Originally in a southern city, then in Deir al-Balah, and currently in al-Bureij camp in the central Gaza Strip. Before the war started, I typically educated several sets of about fourty pupils per class, nearly 240 young minds enthusiastic about knowledge.

Instructing them was my purpose and joy in existence, and I still remember the sparkle in a student’s eyes when a knowledge was acquired; the type of instance every educator lives for.

I always was convinced instruction should be dynamic. My learning environment was a zone of recreation, art, and activity. We created cartographic art, dramatized bygone episodes, and converted teaching into tales.

Joy always filled the room as inquisitiveness displaced anxiety. Certainly, even in earlier times, local youth were always scared. My teaching space was a secure location but after 7 October, everything changed.

My learning center became a safe haven for households fleeing the bombs. Not long later, it was attacked and totally demolished. There are hardly any schools left standing in the region now. For this period, everything has been abnormal. The hostilities has broken every aspect of our reality: security, homes, schools, dreams. Anxiety and sorrow are ever-present realities.

Numerous of my students are now deceased – youth who mentioned dreaming of physicians, artists, and instructors. They were denied even the entitlement to survival. Those who remain live with malnutrition, displacement and fatigue – and however, they still hold onto the desire for education.

At times, when the internet permits, I hear from a handful of them. They write asking: “Are you safe, educator?” We share short messages, miniature instruction, small glimmers of connection amid the chaos. They question if circumstances will ever return to usual. I tell them I have no answer.

Across this territory, instructors, aid workers and charities attempt instruction in any feasible location: in shelters, destroyed learning spaces, or congested safe zones. Schooling has become an act of defiance, a way to declare: “We are still here.” And so long as we continue learning, we will persist.

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