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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

A young student, 12, al-Mawasi

For the past two years since I stepped into a learning environment. Two years since I listened to the school chime at my former school, occupied my place and participated actively during my beloved lesson. At times I still distinctly recollect the auditory and olfactory sensations: powder from the board, sharpener leftovers, laughter echoing down the halls. But my educational institution is gone; it was targeted soon after the hostilities erupted. My learning materials incinerated, and some of my friends killed.

I was in the fifth year on that fateful day: the concluding day I went to school. That beginning of the day, alert signals sounded through the corridors. Some children cried, others gripped each other. Our instructor sought to soothe, but even her tone wavered. I remember wishing for a ordinary day; teaching, break time, a verse presentation. Instead, that day became the last page of my former reality.

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

Now I dwell alongside my mother and father, male relatives and sister in a crowded shelter in this coastal area. The temporary partitions move with air currents, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We queue for sustenance and drinks. Electricity is a dream and personal space is absent. Aspiration appears brittle.

At night, I look up at the night lights through the holes of my shelter and wonder if my companions see the same sky. Some contact me when they can, stating they yearn for classes and have retained their previous journals; like valuables from a bygone era. I feel ashamed because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once envisioned becoming a teacher to assist local youth learn, even when existence was challenging. Now I hope for being a journalist – to write, to speak and to reveal the world what it represents to be a minor in this region. I want to narrate our accounts of apprehension and need, but also bravery. Because even here, amid death and ruins, our expressions persist.

When there’s some internet, I endeavor to educate myself online. Sometimes, I go to a tiny space where volunteers teach us math and Arabic. The instruction is limited – the energy supply stops or the airstrikes begin again but in those moments, I sense being. I remember who I was: the young woman who loved numbers and poems, who was convinced knowledge could alter reality.

The war has taken so much; our homes, educational institutions and families. I grieved for my uncle, his wife, and their offspring. I lost my cherished hometown, Rafah, which is only ruins now. But the hardest loss of all is learning, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

To the world, I state this: don’t let our dreams die. Compassion isn't enough, we demand measures. Young residents merit books, schools and security. Learning is not an extravagance, it is a basic right. Gaza is not just ruins; it is youth who continue to aspire beneath the drones at darkness. It is my account and I will persist in composing, even if the sole items remaining is a broken pencil and a piece of torn paper.

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

An educator, forty, teacher in a refugee camp

I have been educating in the region for more than a decade. Originally in Khan Younis, then in another location, and now in al-Bureij camp in the heart of the region. Prior to hostilities, I used to teach multiple groups of about fourty pupils per class, almost two hundred forty individuals keen on education.

Educating them was my purpose and joy in reality, and I still remember the sparkle in a learner's look when a knowledge was acquired; the sort of occasion every instructor lives for.

I always was convinced education should be dynamic. My learning environment was a area of amusement, creativity, and activity. We created cartographic art, dramatized bygone episodes, and converted teaching into tales.

Laughter always occupied the area as interest substituted fear. Certainly, even in earlier times, young residents were always frightened. My teaching space was a protected zone but after the seventh, everything changed.

My school became a safe haven for families fleeing the bombs. Not long later, it was targeted and entirely ruined. There are very few schools remaining intact in the region now. For 24 months, everything has been abnormal. The conflict has broken every aspect of our reality: safety, residences, learning places, hopes. Fear and grief are constant companions.

Numerous of my pupils are now deceased – youth who mentioned aspiring to be doctors, painters, and instructors. They were deprived even the right to exist. Those who survive endure starvation, relocation and fatigue – and however, they still cling to the thirst for knowledge.

Sometimes, when the internet allows, I hear from a small number of them. They write questioning: “Are you safe, teacher?” We communicate short messages, miniature instruction, tiny sparks of interaction amid the disorder. They question if situations will ever go back to normal. I inform them I don’t know.

Throughout the region, instructors, volunteers and non-profits try to teach in any feasible location: in tents, destroyed learning spaces, or congested safe zones. Learning has become an act of defiance, a way to say: “We persist.” And provided that we continue learning, we will persist.

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