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'Our plea is for action, not compassion'.

Juwayriya Adwan, twelve, a temporary shelter

It has been two years since I was last inside a proper school. That long since I heard the morning bell at my former school, sat at my desk and participated actively during my favourite class. Sometimes I still clearly recall the auditory and olfactory sensations: writing residue, pencil shavings, joyful sounds in corridors. But my school no longer exists; it was bombed soon after the war began. My learning materials incinerated, and companions perished.

I was in the fifth year on the seventh of October: the final day I went to school. That beginning of the day, warning alarms sounded through the halls. Some children cried, others held hands tightly. Our instructor sought to soothe, but even her tone wavered. I remember longing for a normal day; teaching, break time, a verse presentation. Instead, that day became the last page of my previous existence.

Conflict has stolen countless things. But the most painful deprivation of all is learning, because that is the loss of the future itself.

Now I live with my guardians, male relatives and sister in a crowded shelter in Khan Younis. The temporary partitions move with air currents, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We wait in line for nourishment and hydration. Energy access is fantasy and privacy doesn’t exist. Hope feels fragile.

At evening, I look up at the stars through the openings of my shelter and ponder if my peers see the identical heavens. Some contact me when they are able, expressing they long for education and have kept their old notebooks; like treasures from a lost world. I feel ashamed because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once dreamed of pursuing pedagogy to support Gaza’s children learn, even when existence was challenging. Now I aim for being a reporter – to write, to talk and to reveal the world what it signifies to be a child in Gaza. I want to narrate our accounts of apprehension and need, but also fortitude. Because even amid these conditions, amid fatality and debris, our words continue.

When connectivity is available, I attempt learning via the web. Other times, I go to a tiny space where volunteers educate us math and Arabic. The instruction is limited – the energy supply stops or the airstrikes begin again but in such times, I experience vitality. I recall who I was: the girl who cherished arithmetic and verse, who believed education could transform society.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our dwellings, schools and relatives. I lost 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 express this: preserve our aspirations. Compassion isn't enough, we require steps. Gaza’s children merit texts, educational facilities and protection. Learning is not an extravagance, it is a basic right. This region is not merely devastation; it is children who continue to aspire amid unmanned aircraft at night. It is my story and I will persist in composing, even if all I have left is a broken pencil and a fragment of ripped sheet.

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

Naglaa Weshah, forty, instructor in al-Bureij camp

I have been educating in the region for a substantial period. Originally in Khan Younis, then in another location, and currently in this refugee settlement in the central Gaza Strip. In pre-conflict times, I typically educated multiple groups of about dozens of learners, almost two hundred forty individuals enthusiastic about knowledge.

Educating them was my mission and happiness in reality, and I still remember the gleam in a learner's look when a knowledge was acquired; the kind of moment every educator lives for.

I always believed education should be dynamic. My teaching space was a space of play, aesthetics, and motion. We painted maps, dramatized bygone episodes, and turned lessons into stories.

Joy always occupied the area as curiosity replaced apprehension. Certainly, even in earlier times, children in Gaza were always scared. My teaching space was a protected zone but after the seventh, the situation transformed.

My school became a refuge for relatives running from the explosives. Not long later, it was attacked and completely destroyed. There are almost no learning institutions remaining intact in this area now. For this period, everything has been abnormal. The conflict has broken every aspect of our existence: safety, dwellings, educational centers, hopes. Fear and grief are ever-present realities.

Numerous of my pupils are now dead – minors who mentioned aspiring to be doctors, creatives, and teachers. They were refused even the privilege of living. Those who remain endure hunger, displacement and exhaustion – and however, they still maintain the thirst for knowledge.

Occasionally, when the online access enables, I receive messages from a few of them. They message inquiring: “How are you, teacher?” We exchange concise phrases, abbreviated teaching, minor flashes of connection amid the chaos. They ask if situations will ever return to usual. I inform them I am uncertain.

Across Gaza, teachers, helpers and organizations attempt instruction in any feasible location: in tents, ruined educational areas, or packed refuges. Education has become an act of defiance, a way to say: “We are still here.” And as long as we persist in education, we will endure.

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