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'Our plea is for action, not compassion'.

A young student, 12, a temporary shelter

It has been two years since I entered a proper school. That long since I heard the morning bell at the institution I attended, took my seat and answered questions during my favourite class. Occasionally I still clearly recall the familiar scents and noises: writing residue, sharpener leftovers, joyful sounds in corridors. But my learning place was destroyed; it was struck shortly after the conflict started. My learning materials incinerated, and companions perished.

I was in elementary level on 7 October: the last day I went to school. That morning, air raid sirens blared through the passageways. Some pupils sobbed, others gripped each other. Our instructor sought to soothe, but even she sounded shaky. I remember wishing for a normal day; lessons, intermission, a poem recital. Instead, that day marked the end of my previous existence.

Conflict has stolen countless things. But the hardest loss of all is education, because that is the loss of the future itself.

Now I dwell alongside my mother and father, siblings and female sibling in a packed refuge in this coastal area. The shelter coverings sway with breezes, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We wait in line for sustenance and drinks. Electricity is a dream and personal space is absent. Aspiration appears brittle.

At darkness, I gaze toward the celestial bodies through the holes of my tent and question if my companions see the same sky. Some reach out when they are able, expressing they long for education and have kept their old notebooks; like valuables from a bygone era. I feel remorseful because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once aspired to pursuing pedagogy to help young residents study, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I aim for being a writer – to write, to talk and to demonstrate the world what it signifies to be a minor in the Strip. I want to share our experiences of anxiety and deprivation, but also courage. Because even amid these conditions, amid loss and destruction, our expressions persist.

When there’s some internet, I try to study via the web. Other times, I visit a tiny space where helpers instruct us mathematics and language. The lessons are short – the power fails or the attacks recommence but in such times, I experience vitality. I remember who I was: the girl who cherished arithmetic and verse, who believed education could transform society.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our homes, learning centers and families. I grieved for my paternal relative, his wife, and their young ones. I forfeited my beloved urban area, my previous home, which is nothing but rubble now. But the toughest sacrifice of all is learning, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

To the world, I express this: preserve our aspirations. We seek no sympathy, we require steps. The youth are entitled to literature, learning environments and safety. Learning is not optional, it is a essential privilege. This region is not only destruction; it is youth who continue to aspire under aerial surveillance at night. It is my narrative and I will persist in composing, even if the sole items remaining is a broken pencil and a fragment of ripped sheet.

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

Naglaa Weshah, forty, instructor in central Gaza

I have been teaching in this area for more than a decade. First in Khan Younis, then in a different town, and presently in this refugee settlement in the central Gaza Strip. Before the war started, I regularly instructed multiple groups of about fourty pupils per class, hundreds of eager students eager to learn.

Teaching them was my vocation and delight in existence, and I still remember the sparkle in a learner's look when a new idea clicked; the type of instance every teacher lives for.

I always believed instruction should be dynamic. My teaching space was a area of amusement, aesthetics, and movement. We created cartographic art, dramatized bygone episodes, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Laughter always filled the room as curiosity replaced fear. Yes, even in earlier times, children in Gaza were always scared. My learning environment was a protected zone but after that day, all was altered.

My educational institution became a refuge for households running from the bombs. Not long later, it was attacked and completely destroyed. There are very few learning institutions still erect in the region now. For this period, all has been unusual. The hostilities has shattered every facet of our lives: security, residences, educational centers, dreams. Anxiety and sorrow are ever-present realities.

Numerous of my students are now deceased – children who mentioned becoming doctors, creatives, and educators. They were denied even the right to exist. Those who survive live with malnutrition, displacement and fatigue – and however, they still maintain the thirst for knowledge.

Occasionally, when the online access allows, I receive messages from a few of them. They message asking: “Are you safe, educator?” We communicate concise phrases, miniature instruction, minor flashes of contact amid the chaos. They ask if things will ever go back to normal. I state to them I don’t know.

Across the region, educators, volunteers and non-profits endeavor education in all available spaces: in temporary structures, destroyed learning spaces, or crowded shelters. Schooling has become an gesture of resistance, a way to declare: “We are still here.” And provided that we keep acquiring knowledge, we will endure.

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