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'Our plea is for action, not compassion'.

A young student, 12, a temporary shelter

It has been two years since I was last inside a proper school. Two years since I listened to the morning bell at the institution I attended, occupied my place and participated actively during my preferred subject. Occasionally I still clearly recall the sounds and smells: chalk dust, wooden scraps, joyful sounds in corridors. But my school no longer exists; it was targeted shortly after the war began. My learning materials incinerated, and several classmates lost.

I was in elementary level on that fateful day: the last day I entered the school building. That morning, alert signals sounded through the halls. Some pupils sobbed, others gripped each other. Our instructor sought to soothe, but even her tone wavered. I remember hoping for a normal day; instruction, intermission, a verse presentation. Instead, that day marked the end of my former reality.

The war has taken so much. But the toughest sacrifice of all is education, because without it, our prospects disappear.

Now I reside with my mother and father, siblings and female sibling in a crowded shelter in Khan Younis. The tent walls flap in the wind, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We line up for water and food. Electricity is a dream and privacy doesn’t exist. Aspiration appears brittle.

At darkness, I observe the celestial bodies through the holes of my shelter and ponder if my peers see the identical heavens. Some message me when they are able, stating they yearn for classes and have preserved their old notebooks; like treasures from a lost world. I feel guilty because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once envisioned pursuing pedagogy to support local youth acquire knowledge, even when life was hard. Now I dream of being a reporter – to draft, to communicate and to reveal the world what it means to be a minor in Gaza. I want to share our experiences of apprehension and need, but also bravery. Because even amid these conditions, amid fatality and debris, our words continue.

When connectivity is available, I attempt learning via the web. Sometimes, I go to a modest shelter where helpers teach us arithmetic and Arabic. The sessions are brief – the power fails or the airstrikes begin again but in those moments, I sense being. I recollect who I was: the student who cherished arithmetic and verse, who thought knowledge could alter reality.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our dwellings, schools and families. I grieved for my paternal relative, his spouse, and their offspring. I lost my cherished hometown, my previous home, which is nothing but rubble now. But the hardest loss of all is schooling, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the global audience, I say this: keep our hopes alive. We seek no sympathy, we require steps. The youth are entitled to texts, schools and security. Education is not an extravagance, it is a basic right. This region is not merely devastation; it is minors who persist in hoping under aerial surveillance at evening. It is my narrative and I will persist in composing, even if the sole items remaining is a fractured utensil and a fragment of ripped sheet.

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

Naglaa Weshah, forty, instructor in central Gaza

I have been instructing in Gaza for over ten years. Originally in Khan Younis, then in a different town, and now in al-Bureij camp in the central Gaza Strip. In pre-conflict times, I regularly instructed multiple groups of about dozens of learners, almost two hundred forty individuals enthusiastic about knowledge.

Educating them was my vocation and delight in life, and I still recall the twinkle in a student’s eyes when a knowledge was acquired; the sort of occasion every educator strives for.

I always was convinced learning should be full of life. My learning environment was a area of recreation, aesthetics, and activity. We painted maps, performed past occurrences, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Laughter always filled the room as curiosity displaced apprehension. Certainly, even before the war, young residents were always scared. My classroom was a secure location but after the seventh, everything changed.

My educational institution became a shelter for families running from the aerial attacks. Soon, it was attacked and completely destroyed. There are very few educational facilities left standing in this area now. For this period, everything has been abnormal. The hostilities has shattered every facet of our lives: protection, residences, learning places, dreams. Anxiety and sorrow are perpetual experiences.

Many of my learners are now lost – minors who mentioned becoming physicians, painters, and teachers. They were deprived even the privilege of living. Those who survive endure hunger, eviction and fatigue – and yet, they still maintain the desire for education.

At times, when the online access allows, I get in touch with a few of them. They message inquiring: “Are you safe, instructor?” We communicate short messages, abbreviated teaching, small glimmers of connection amid the disorder. They question if circumstances will ever return to usual. I inform them I don’t know.

All over the region, instructors, aid workers and non-profits endeavor education wherever possible: in shelters, damaged classrooms, or crowded shelters. Learning has become an act of defiance, a way to declare: “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 parent of {three|several