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'Our plea is for action, not compassion'.

Juwayriya Adwan, 12, a temporary shelter

For the past 24 months since I was last inside a real classroom. Two years since I listened to the school chime at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, occupied my place and raised my hand during my preferred subject. Occasionally I still clearly recall the sounds and smells: chalk dust, wooden scraps, cheerful echoes. But my learning place was destroyed; it was bombed soon after the conflict started. My books were burned, and some of my friends killed.

I was in the fifth year on 7 October: the concluding day I went to school. That beginning of the day, warning alarms blared through the halls. Some children cried, others gripped each other. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even she sounded shaky. I remember wishing for a normal day; instruction, break time, a poem recital. Instead, that day became the last page of my previous existence.

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

Now I reside with my mother and father, male relatives and female sibling in a packed refuge in al-Mawasi. The tent walls move with air currents, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We queue for sustenance and drinks. Energy access is fantasy and personal space is absent. Optimism seems delicate.

At darkness, I gaze toward the stars through the gaps of my temporary home and question if my companions see the comparable vista. Some message me when they are able, saying they yearn for classes and have kept their former exercise books; like treasures from a lost world. I feel guilty because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once envisioned becoming a teacher to support young residents learn, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I dream of being a reporter – to draft, to speak and to demonstrate the world what it signifies to be a child in this region. I want to narrate our accounts of apprehension and need, but also bravery. Because even here, amid fatality and debris, our voices refuse to be silent.

When there’s some internet, I attempt learning digitally. Sometimes, I attend a modest shelter where helpers instruct us math and Arabic. The sessions are brief – the electricity cuts out or the bombing resumes but in those moments, I sense being. I recall who I was: the young woman who loved numbers and poems, who believed knowledge could alter reality.

Hostilities have stolen countless aspects; our homes, learning centers and relatives. I mourned my family member, his partner, and their children. I forfeited my beloved urban area, Rafah, which is only ruins now. But the most painful deprivation of all is schooling, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the international community, I express this: don’t let our dreams die. We seek no sympathy, we demand measures. The youth deserve literature, schools and protection. Schooling is not optional, it is a basic right. This region is not just ruins; it is children who persist in hoping amid unmanned aircraft at night. It is my story and I will continue writing, even if my only possessions is a broken pencil and a scrap of damaged material.

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

Naglaa Weshah, forty, teacher in central Gaza

I have been educating in Gaza for over ten years. First in a southern city, then in another location, and currently in this refugee settlement in the middle of the territory. In pre-conflict times, I regularly instructed six classes of about 40 students each, nearly 240 young minds eager to learn.

Instructing them was my vocation and delight in life, and I still remember the gleam in a pupil's gaze when a concept was understood; the kind of moment every teacher strives for.

I always was convinced instruction should be dynamic. My classroom was a space of play, art, and movement. We painted maps, acted out historical events, and turned lessons into stories.

Merriment always filled the room as curiosity replaced fear. Yes, even before the war, local youth were always scared. My teaching space was a place of safety but after that day, everything changed.

My learning center became a shelter for relatives fleeing the bombs. Shortly after, it was targeted and completely destroyed. There are hardly any educational facilities still erect in the region now. For this period, everything has been abnormal. The war has destroyed every facet of our reality: protection, residences, learning places, aspirations. Fear and grief are constant companions.

Many of my pupils are now lost – youth who mentioned aspiring to be doctors, creatives, and educators. They were denied even the entitlement to survival. Those who survive live with starvation, relocation and weariness – and yet, they still hold onto the thirst for knowledge.

Occasionally, when the online access enables, I receive messages from a handful of them. They write asking: “Are you safe, educator?” We communicate brief words, miniature instruction, minor flashes of connection amid the chaos. They ask if circumstances will ever go back to normal. I inform them I have no answer.

All over Gaza, teachers, volunteers and organizations try to teach in any feasible location: in shelters, ruined educational areas, or crowded shelters. Education has become an demonstration of perseverance, a way to declare: “Our presence continues.” And provided that we keep acquiring knowledge, we will remain.

A significant number of us are also caregivers. I am a mother of {three|several