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'Our plea is for action, not compassion'.

Juwayriya Adwan, twelve, al-Mawasi

For the past 24 months since I was last inside a real classroom. That long since I listened to the school chime at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, occupied my place and answered questions during my favourite class. At times I still distinctly recollect the familiar scents and noises: chalk dust, pencil shavings, joyful sounds in corridors. But my educational institution is gone; it was bombed soon after the war began. My textbooks turned to ash, and companions perished.

I was in elementary level on the seventh of October: the last day I went to school. That beginning of the day, alert signals sounded through the passageways. Some students wept, others clasped palms firmly. Our educator attempted reassurance, but even her tone wavered. I remember longing for a routine day; instruction, break time, a literary performance. Instead, that day became the last page of my former reality.

The war has taken so much. But the hardest loss of all is schooling, because without it, our prospects disappear.

Now I dwell alongside my parents, male relatives and sister in a crowded shelter in al-Mawasi. The tent walls move with air currents, providing no climate control. We line up for water and food. Energy access is fantasy and seclusion is unavailable. Hope feels fragile.

At evening, I look up at the night lights through the holes of my shelter and ponder if my peers see the comparable vista. Some message me when they are able, saying they long for education and have preserved their old notebooks; like relics of a vanished time. I feel guilty because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once dreamed of entering the education field to support young residents acquire knowledge, even when life was hard. Now I hope for being a writer – to draft, to communicate and to reveal the world what it represents to be a young person in this region. I want to share our experiences of fear and hunger, but also courage. Because even in this place, amid death and ruins, our words continue.

When there’s some internet, I endeavor to educate myself online. Sometimes, I go to a modest shelter where aid workers teach us arithmetic and Arabic. The instruction is limited – the electricity cuts out or the bombing resumes but in such times, I feel alive. I recollect who I was: the young woman who cherished arithmetic and verse, who thought education could transform society.

The war has taken so much; our residences, learning centers and kin. 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 education, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the world, I state this: keep our hopes alive. We don’t want pity, we demand measures. Gaza’s children deserve texts, learning environments and security. Education is not an extravagance, it is a fundamental entitlement. This region is not just ruins; it is children who persist in hoping beneath the drones at evening. It is my story and I will continue writing, even if my only possessions is a damaged writing tool and a fragment of ripped sheet.

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

Naglaa Weshah, forty, instructor in al-Bureij camp

I have been teaching in the region for a substantial period. Initially in that urban area, then in Deir al-Balah, and currently in al-Bureij camp in the heart of the region. Before the war started, I regularly instructed several sets of about fourty pupils per class, nearly 240 young minds keen on education.

Teaching them was my vocation and delight in reality, and I still recollect the sparkle in a pupil's gaze when a new idea clicked; the type of instance every educator strives for.

I always believed learning should be dynamic. My teaching space was a zone of play, art, and movement. We designed geographical illustrations, performed past occurrences, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Laughter always filled the room as interest displaced fear. Indeed, even before the war, young residents were always frightened. My classroom was a secure location but after 7 October, everything changed.

My learning center became a shelter for relatives escaping the aerial attacks. Shortly after, it was struck and entirely ruined. There are hardly any learning institutions still erect in this area now. For 24 months, everything has been abnormal. The conflict has destroyed every part of our lives: security, dwellings, schools, dreams. Fear and grief are perpetual experiences.

Numerous of my students are now lost – youth who talked about becoming doctors, artists, and teachers. They were denied even the privilege of living. Those who are still here endure hunger, displacement and weariness – and however, they still maintain the will to learn.

At times, when the internet permits, I receive messages from a few of them. They write asking: “How are you, teacher?” We share short messages, abbreviated teaching, tiny sparks of contact amid the disorder. They ask if circumstances will ever go back to normal. I tell them I am uncertain.

Across Gaza, instructors, aid workers and organizations try to teach in any feasible location: in temporary structures, destroyed learning spaces, or packed refuges. Schooling has become an demonstration of perseverance, a way to say: “Our presence continues.” And so long as we keep acquiring knowledge, we will endure.

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