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'Our plea is for action, not compassion'.

A young student, 12, al-Mawasi

It has been 24 months since I was last inside a learning environment. Two years since I heard the school chime at the institution I attended, took my seat and raised my hand during my preferred subject. Sometimes I still clearly recall the familiar scents and noises: powder from the board, sharpener leftovers, laughter echoing down the halls. But my educational institution is gone; it was bombed soon after the hostilities erupted. My textbooks turned to ash, and some of my friends killed.

I was in elementary level on the seventh of October: the concluding day I entered the school building. That early hours, air raid sirens blared through the passageways. Some students wept, others held hands tightly. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even her tone wavered. I remember wishing for a routine day; teaching, break time, a verse presentation. Instead, that day became the last page of my former reality.

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, male relatives and sister in a congested safe space in Khan Younis. The tent walls move with air currents, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We wait in line for water and food. Energy access is fantasy and seclusion is unavailable. Aspiration appears brittle.

At darkness, I look up at the night lights through the holes of my temporary home and question if my friends see the identical heavens. Some reach out when they are able, stating they miss school and have preserved their former exercise books; like relics of a vanished time. I feel guilty because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once aspired to becoming a teacher to help Gaza’s children acquire knowledge, even when life was hard. Now I hope for being a writer – to compose, to talk and to reveal the world what it represents to be a young person in Gaza. I want to share our experiences of apprehension and need, but also fortitude. Because even here, amid death and ruins, our words continue.

When there’s some internet, I try to study online. Sometimes, I visit a modest shelter where volunteers educate us arithmetic and Arabic. The sessions are brief – the electricity cuts out or the airstrikes begin again but in such times, I feel alive. I remember who I was: the young woman who loved numbers and poems, who thought knowledge could alter reality.

Hostilities have stolen countless aspects; our homes, educational institutions and families. I lost my paternal relative, his wife, and their children. I forfeited my cherished hometown, that southern city, which is merely debris now. But the most painful deprivation of all is schooling, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

To the global audience, I say this: don’t let our dreams die. We seek no sympathy, we demand measures. Gaza’s children deserve books, schools and safety. Learning is not optional, it is a fundamental entitlement. Gaza is not just ruins; it is children who still dream amid unmanned aircraft at evening. It is my narrative and I will keep drafting, even if the sole items remaining is a broken pencil and a piece of torn paper.

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

Naglaa Weshah, 40, teacher in central Gaza

I have been educating in this area for over ten years. Initially in a southern city, then in Deir al-Balah, and presently in al-Bureij camp in the central Gaza Strip. Before the war started, I regularly instructed several sets of about fourty pupils per class, hundreds of eager students eager to learn.

Educating them was my vocation and delight in reality, and I still recall the twinkle in a learner's look when a knowledge was acquired; the type of instance every instructor cherishes.

I always was convinced learning should be vibrant. My learning environment was a zone of recreation, art, and activity. We designed geographical illustrations, dramatized bygone episodes, and converted teaching into tales.

Laughter always permeated the space as inquisitiveness substituted fear. Certainly, even in earlier times, children in Gaza were always frightened. My teaching space was a protected zone but after 7 October, the situation transformed.

My school became a shelter for households running from the bombs. Not long later, it was targeted and completely destroyed. There are very few learning institutions left standing in Gaza now. For this period, all has been unusual. The war has destroyed every facet of our lives: security, dwellings, educational centers, dreams. Apprehension and mourning are perpetual experiences.

Many of my pupils are now dead – youth who talked about aspiring to be doctors, creatives, and instructors. They were deprived even the right to exist. Those who remain experience starvation, relocation and fatigue – and nevertheless, they still cling to the desire for education.

Sometimes, when the internet enables, I get in touch with a small number of them. They contact inquiring: “Are you OK, instructor?” We exchange brief words, short lessons, tiny sparks of contact amid the chaos. They inquire if things will ever return to usual. I inform them I don’t know.

Throughout the region, instructors, helpers and organizations try to teach in any feasible location: in tents, damaged classrooms, or crowded shelters. Schooling has become an gesture of resistance, a way to express: “We are still here.” And provided that we persist in education, we will endure.

A significant number of us are also guardians. I am a guardian of {three|several