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'Our plea is for action, not compassion'.

A young student, 12, al-Mawasi

It has been 24 months since I stepped into a proper school. Two years since I heard the school chime at my former school, occupied my place and participated actively during my beloved lesson. Occasionally I still vividly remember the familiar scents and noises: powder from the board, sharpener leftovers, joyful sounds in corridors. But my educational institution is gone; it was struck not long after the war began. My textbooks turned to ash, and several classmates lost.

I was in elementary level on the seventh of October: the concluding day I entered the school building. That morning, warning alarms blared through the corridors. Some students wept, others gripped each other. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even her voice trembled. I remember hoping for a routine day; instruction, recess, a literary performance. Instead, that day marked the end of my former reality.

Hostilities have claimed innumerable aspects. But the toughest sacrifice of all is learning, because without it, our prospects disappear.

Now I live with my mother and father, two brothers and sister in a packed refuge in al-Mawasi. The shelter coverings flap in the wind, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We line up for sustenance and drinks. Power is imaginary and privacy doesn’t exist. Hope feels fragile.

At night, I look up at the night lights through the openings of my shelter and question if my companions see the identical heavens. Some message me when they are able, expressing they yearn for classes and have preserved their previous journals; like valuables from a bygone era. I feel ashamed because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once aspired to entering the education field to help young residents acquire knowledge, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I dream of being a reporter – to write, to talk and to demonstrate the world what it means to be a young person in Gaza. I want to narrate our accounts of anxiety and deprivation, but also bravery. Because even in this place, amid loss and destruction, our words continue.

When there’s some internet, I endeavor to educate myself digitally. Other times, I go to a tiny space where aid workers educate us mathematics and language. The instruction is limited – the power fails or the bombing resumes but in such times, I sense being. I recall who I was: the student who loved numbers and poems, who thought knowledge could alter reality.

Hostilities have stolen countless aspects; our dwellings, educational institutions and families. I mourned my family member, his wife, and their children. I forfeited my beautiful city, my previous home, which is nothing but rubble now. But the hardest loss of all is learning, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the world, I state this: keep our hopes alive. Compassion isn't enough, we demand measures. Gaza’s children merit texts, learning environments and protection. Learning is not an extravagance, it is a fundamental entitlement. Gaza is not only destruction; it is minors who continue to aspire beneath the drones at evening. It is my narrative and I will continue writing, even if the sole items remaining is a fractured utensil and a fragment of ripped sheet.

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

Naglaa Weshah, forty, instructor in central Gaza

I have been educating in Gaza for more than a decade. Initially in that urban area, then in Deir al-Balah, and now in this refugee settlement in the middle of the territory. In pre-conflict times, I typically educated several sets of about fourty pupils per class, hundreds of eager students enthusiastic about knowledge.

Instructing them was my purpose and joy in reality, and I still recall the twinkle in a learner's look when a concept was understood; the kind of moment every instructor strives for.

I always believed learning should be full of life. My teaching space was a space of recreation, art, and movement. We created cartographic art, acted out historical events, and turned lessons into stories.

Joy always occupied the area as interest displaced apprehension. Yes, even prior to conflict, young residents were always frightened. My classroom was a protected zone but after the seventh, the situation transformed.

My learning center became a shelter for families fleeing the explosives. Soon, it was attacked and entirely ruined. There are very few learning institutions left standing in this area now. For 24 months, all has been unusual. The conflict has shattered every facet of our reality: safety, residences, learning places, aspirations. Apprehension and mourning are ever-present realities.

Many of my pupils are now dead – youth who talked about becoming physicians, artists, and instructors. They were deprived even the entitlement to survival. Those who survive endure hunger, relocation and exhaustion – and however, they still maintain the will to learn.

Occasionally, when the online access enables, I receive messages from a small number of them. They write questioning: “Are you safe, instructor?” We exchange brief words, miniature instruction, tiny sparks of contact amid the disorder. They inquire if things will ever return to usual. I inform them I don’t know.

Across this territory, instructors, helpers and non-profits try to teach in all available spaces: in shelters, destroyed learning spaces, or packed refuges. Schooling has become an demonstration of perseverance, a way to declare: “We are still here.” And as long as we keep acquiring knowledge, we will persist.

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