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'Our plea is for action, not compassion'.

A young student, 12, a temporary shelter

For the past 24 months since I was last inside a learning environment. That long since I heard the school chime at the institution I attended, sat at my desk and answered questions during my preferred subject. At times I still vividly remember the sounds and smells: powder from the board, sharpener leftovers, joyful sounds in corridors. But my school no longer exists; it was bombed not long after the hostilities erupted. My learning materials incinerated, and some of my friends killed.

I was in fifth grade on the seventh of October: the concluding day I went to school. That early hours, air raid sirens blared through the corridors. Some children cried, others held hands tightly. Our instructor sought to soothe, but even her tone wavered. I remember hoping for a routine day; lessons, break time, a poem recital. Instead, that day became the last page of my previous existence.

Conflict has stolen countless things. But the hardest loss of all is learning, because without it, our prospects disappear.

Now I live with my mother and father, two brothers and sister in a congested safe space in al-Mawasi. The temporary partitions move with air currents, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We line up for nourishment and hydration. Energy access is fantasy and privacy doesn’t exist. Aspiration appears brittle.

At evening, I observe the stars through the gaps of my tent and ponder if my companions see the identical heavens. Some contact me when they can, expressing they long for education and have kept their old notebooks; like treasures from a lost world. I feel guilty because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once dreamed of entering the education field to support young residents study, even when life was hard. Now I hope for being a writer – to draft, to talk and to demonstrate the world what it represents to be a minor in Gaza. I want to narrate our accounts of fear and hunger, but also fortitude. Because even here, amid loss and destruction, our words continue.

When online access exists, I try to study via the web. On other occasions, I go to a tiny space where aid workers educate us math and Arabic. The sessions are brief – the energy supply stops or the attacks recommence but in such times, I experience vitality. I recollect who I was: the young woman who loved numbers and poems, who thought knowledge could alter reality.

Hostilities have stolen countless aspects; our dwellings, learning centers and kin. I grieved for my paternal relative, his partner, and their offspring. I forfeited my beloved urban area, that southern city, which is nothing but rubble now. But the most painful deprivation of all is schooling, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

To the world, I express this: preserve our aspirations. Compassion isn't enough, we require steps. Young residents are entitled to books, educational facilities and safety. Schooling is not optional, it is a fundamental entitlement. Gaza is not only destruction; it is children who continue to aspire under aerial surveillance at evening. It is my story and I will keep drafting, even if all I have left is a broken pencil and a scrap of damaged material.

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

An educator, 40, instructor in a refugee camp

I have been educating in this area for over ten years. First in Khan Younis, then in a different town, and currently in al-Bureij camp in the central Gaza Strip. In pre-conflict times, I regularly instructed multiple groups of about 40 students each, hundreds of eager students enthusiastic about knowledge.

Educating them was my mission and happiness in reality, and I still recollect the sparkle in a student’s eyes when a concept was understood; the type of instance every teacher lives for.

I always believed learning should be vibrant. My classroom was a space of amusement, aesthetics, and movement. We designed geographical illustrations, performed past occurrences, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Joy always permeated the space as interest displaced fear. Indeed, even before the war, local youth were always afraid. My teaching space was a place of safety but after that day, the situation transformed.

My learning center became a refuge for relatives fleeing the explosives. Soon, it was targeted and totally demolished. There are hardly any learning institutions remaining intact in Gaza now. For this period, everything has been abnormal. The war has destroyed every facet of our reality: security, homes, educational centers, hopes. Anxiety and sorrow are perpetual experiences.

A significant number of my pupils are now dead – minors who mentioned dreaming of doctors, creatives, and instructors. They were deprived even the entitlement to survival. Those who survive live with malnutrition, displacement and exhaustion – and however, they still maintain the thirst for knowledge.

Sometimes, when the internet enables, I get in touch with a handful of them. They contact questioning: “Are you safe, instructor?” We communicate brief words, short lessons, minor flashes of connection amid the chaos. They inquire if things will ever go back to normal. I inform them I have no answer.

Throughout the region, teachers, helpers and organizations endeavor education in any feasible location: in temporary structures, ruined educational areas, or congested safe zones. Education has become an demonstration of perseverance, a way to say: “We persist.” And provided that we persist in education, we will endure.

Many of us are also parents. I am a guardian of {three|several