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'We seek action, not sympathy'.

Juwayriya Adwan, twelve, a temporary shelter

For the past two years since I was last inside a real classroom. Two years since I heard the start-of-class signal at my former school, took my seat and participated actively during my beloved lesson. Sometimes I still distinctly recollect the auditory and olfactory sensations: chalk dust, sharpener leftovers, joyful sounds in corridors. But my school no longer exists; it was targeted not long after the conflict started. My textbooks turned to ash, and companions perished.

I was in the fifth year on the seventh of October: the last day I entered the school building. That early hours, air raid sirens blared through the halls. Some students wept, others gripped each other. Our instructor sought to soothe, but even she sounded shaky. I remember longing for a normal day; lessons, recess, a literary performance. Instead, that day signaled the conclusion of my former reality.

Conflict has stolen countless things. But the most painful deprivation of all is education, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

Now I dwell alongside my mother and father, siblings and sister in a crowded shelter in this coastal area. The shelter coverings sway with breezes, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We wait in line for sustenance and drinks. Electricity is a dream and seclusion is unavailable. Hope feels fragile.

At evening, I gaze toward the night lights through the openings of my shelter and question if my peers see the comparable vista. Some reach out when they manage, saying they yearn for classes and have preserved their previous journals; like treasures from a lost world. I feel remorseful because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once aspired to pursuing pedagogy to assist Gaza’s children learn, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I aim for being a reporter – to compose, to communicate and to reveal the world what it represents to be a child in Gaza. I want to narrate our accounts of anxiety and deprivation, but also bravery. Because even amid these conditions, amid death and ruins, our voices refuse to be silent.

When online access exists, I endeavor to educate myself via the web. Other times, I go to a small tent where aid workers teach us mathematics and language. The lessons are short – the energy supply stops or the airstrikes begin again but in these instances, I experience vitality. I recollect who I was: the girl who loved numbers and poems, who was convinced learning could change the world.

The war has taken so much; our homes, schools and relatives. I mourned my paternal relative, his wife, and their offspring. I said goodbye to my beautiful city, that southern city, which is nothing but rubble now. But the most painful deprivation of all is learning, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the international community, I say this: preserve our aspirations. Compassion isn't enough, we require steps. Young residents are entitled to texts, schools and security. Schooling is not a luxury, it is a basic right. The territory is not only destruction; it is youth who persist in hoping amid unmanned aircraft at night. It is my account and I will persist in composing, even if the sole items remaining is a broken pencil and a scrap of damaged material.

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

An educator, forty, instructor in a refugee camp

I have been teaching in the region for a substantial period. Originally in that urban area, then in another location, and now in al-Bureij camp in the middle of the territory. Before the war started, I used to teach six classes of about dozens of learners, almost two hundred forty individuals keen on education.

Teaching them was my purpose and joy in life, and I still recollect the gleam in a student’s eyes when a knowledge was acquired; the sort of occasion every instructor cherishes.

I always believed instruction should be dynamic. My classroom was a area of recreation, art, and motion. We created cartographic art, acted out historical events, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Laughter always permeated the space as curiosity substituted anxiety. Certainly, even prior to conflict, local youth were always scared. My learning environment was a secure location but after the seventh, everything changed.

My educational institution became a safe haven for relatives escaping the bombs. Not long later, it was attacked and completely destroyed. There are almost no schools remaining intact in this area now. For two years, nothing has been normal. The conflict has shattered every facet of our lives: security, dwellings, schools, hopes. Anxiety and sorrow are ever-present realities.

A significant number of my students are now deceased – minors who talked about dreaming of medical professionals, painters, and educators. They were refused even the right to exist. Those who remain endure hunger, displacement and exhaustion – and nevertheless, they still maintain the will to learn.

Sometimes, when the internet permits, I hear from a handful of them. They write asking: “How are you, teacher?” We communicate concise phrases, abbreviated teaching, minor flashes of connection amid the disorder. They ask if things will ever go back to normal. I tell them I have no answer.

Across this territory, teachers, aid workers and organizations endeavor education in any feasible location: in tents, ruined educational areas, or congested safe zones. Education has become an demonstration of perseverance, a way to say: “Our presence continues.” And provided that we keep acquiring knowledge, we will persist.

Many of us are also guardians. I am a mother of {three|several