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'We seek action, not sympathy'.

Juwayriya Adwan, twelve, al-Mawasi

For the past two years since I stepped into a real classroom. Two years since I listened to the morning bell at my former school, occupied my place and raised my hand during my favourite class. Occasionally I still vividly remember the sounds and smells: chalk dust, sharpener leftovers, 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 the fifth year on 7 October: the final day I entered the school building. That early hours, air raid sirens blared through the halls. Some students wept, others gripped each other. Our educator attempted reassurance, but even she sounded shaky. I remember wishing for a routine day; instruction, break time, a verse presentation. Instead, that day became the last page of my former reality.

Hostilities have claimed innumerable aspects. But the hardest loss of all is education, because that is the loss of the future itself.

Now I live with my mother and father, two brothers and sister in a crowded shelter in Khan Younis. The tent walls move with air currents, providing no climate control. We queue for sustenance and drinks. Energy access is fantasy and personal space is absent. Aspiration appears brittle.

At night, I gaze toward the night lights through the gaps of my tent and ponder if my peers see the identical heavens. Some message me when they are able, stating they long for education and have retained their previous journals; like treasures from a lost world. I feel remorseful because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once envisioned pursuing pedagogy to help local youth acquire knowledge, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I dream of being a writer – to draft, to talk and to show the world what it represents to be a child in this region. I want to narrate our accounts of fear and hunger, but also bravery. Because even in this place, amid fatality and debris, our expressions persist.

When there’s some internet, I attempt learning online. Other times, I attend a modest shelter where helpers teach us arithmetic and Arabic. The sessions are brief – the electricity cuts out or the airstrikes begin again but in these instances, I feel alive. I recollect who I was: the girl who loved numbers and poems, who was convinced education could transform society.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our dwellings, schools and kin. I lost my paternal relative, his partner, and their offspring. I lost my beloved urban area, my previous home, which is nothing but rubble now. But the most painful deprivation of all is education, because without it, our prospects disappear.

To the global audience, I state this: don’t let our dreams die. Compassion isn't enough, we demand measures. Gaza’s children are entitled to texts, learning environments and security. Learning is not an extravagance, it is a fundamental entitlement. The territory is not merely devastation; it is children who still dream amid unmanned aircraft at darkness. It is my narrative and I will keep drafting, even if my only possessions is a damaged writing tool and a fragment of ripped sheet.

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

An educator, 40, instructor in a refugee camp

I have been instructing in the region for more than a decade. Originally in that urban area, then in another location, and currently in this refugee settlement in the middle of the territory. Prior to hostilities, I regularly instructed multiple groups of about fourty pupils per class, hundreds of eager students keen on education.

Educating them was my mission and happiness in existence, and I still recollect the gleam in a learner's look when a concept was understood; the sort of occasion every educator cherishes.

I always was convinced instruction should be vibrant. My learning environment was a zone of amusement, creativity, and activity. We created cartographic art, performed past occurrences, and turned lessons into stories.

Merriment always filled the room as interest replaced anxiety. Indeed, even prior to conflict, children in Gaza were always frightened. My classroom was a secure location but after 7 October, everything changed.

My school became a shelter for relatives fleeing the bombs. Not long later, it was attacked and totally demolished. There are very few schools left standing in this area now. For two years, everything has been abnormal. The war has shattered every facet of our existence: security, homes, educational centers, dreams. Fear and grief are ever-present realities.

A significant number of my pupils are now dead – children who mentioned aspiring to be medical professionals, artists, and teachers. They were deprived even the privilege of living. Those who survive experience malnutrition, relocation and weariness – and nevertheless, they still maintain the desire for education.

Sometimes, when the internet allows, I receive messages from a small number of them. They write inquiring: “Are you safe, instructor?” We exchange brief words, short lessons, tiny sparks of interaction amid the turmoil. They inquire if circumstances will ever revert to standard. I inform them I have no answer.

Across Gaza, instructors, volunteers and non-profits try to teach wherever possible: in temporary structures, destroyed learning spaces, or crowded shelters. Education has become an demonstration of perseverance, a way to declare: “We persist.” And as long as we keep acquiring knowledge, we will remain.

Numerous of us are also guardians. I am a guardian of {three|several