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'We seek action, not sympathy'.

A young student, 12, al-Mawasi

For the past two years since I entered a learning environment. That long since I heard the school chime at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, took my seat and answered questions during my beloved lesson. At times I still distinctly recollect the auditory and olfactory sensations: writing residue, pencil shavings, cheerful echoes. But my learning place was destroyed; it was bombed shortly after the war began. My textbooks turned to ash, and companions perished.

I was in the fifth year on that fateful day: the concluding day I entered the school building. That morning, alert signals screamed through the passageways. Some pupils sobbed, others gripped each other. Our educator attempted reassurance, but even her tone wavered. I remember hoping for a normal day; lessons, break time, a literary performance. Instead, that day signaled the conclusion of my previous existence.

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

Now I reside with my guardians, male relatives and female sibling in a packed refuge in this coastal area. The temporary partitions move with air currents, providing no climate control. We queue for nourishment and hydration. Electricity is a dream and personal space is absent. Optimism seems delicate.

At night, I look up at the night lights through the holes of my tent and wonder if my friends see the identical heavens. Some contact me when they can, expressing they yearn for classes and have retained their former exercise books; like treasures from a lost world. I feel remorseful because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once dreamed of becoming a teacher to assist Gaza’s children acquire knowledge, even when life was hard. Now I dream of being a journalist – to write, to communicate and to demonstrate the world what it means to be a minor in Gaza. I want to narrate our accounts of fear and hunger, but also courage. Because even in this place, amid loss and destruction, our words continue.

When connectivity is available, I try to study digitally. Other times, I attend a small tent where helpers teach us arithmetic and Arabic. The lessons are short – the energy supply stops or the attacks recommence but in these instances, I sense being. I recall who I was: the girl who cherished arithmetic and verse, who thought learning could change the world.

The war has taken so much; our homes, educational institutions and kin. I mourned my family member, his partner, and their offspring. I forfeited my cherished hometown, Rafah, which is only ruins now. But the hardest loss of all is education, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

To the world, I say this: preserve our aspirations. We don’t want pity, we demand measures. Gaza’s children deserve books, schools and protection. Schooling is not an extravagance, it is a fundamental entitlement. This region is not just ruins; it is children who continue to aspire amid unmanned aircraft at evening. It is my narrative and I will persist in composing, even if all I have left is a damaged writing tool and a fragment of ripped sheet.

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

An educator, 40, instructor in al-Bureij camp

I have been teaching in the region for over ten years. Initially in Khan Younis, then in another location, and now in al-Bureij camp in the central Gaza Strip. In pre-conflict times, I typically educated six classes of about dozens of learners, almost two hundred forty individuals keen on education.

Educating them was my mission and happiness in reality, and I still recall the gleam in a learner's look when a concept was understood; the kind of moment every teacher strives for.

I always thought education should be dynamic. My teaching space was a zone of recreation, aesthetics, and motion. We painted maps, acted out historical events, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Merriment always occupied the area as curiosity replaced apprehension. Yes, even in earlier times, children in Gaza were always frightened. My learning environment was a place of safety but after 7 October, the situation transformed.

My school became a refuge for households running from the bombs. Shortly after, it was struck and completely destroyed. There are hardly any educational facilities left standing in Gaza now. For this period, everything has been abnormal. The hostilities has destroyed every part of our existence: safety, homes, educational centers, dreams. Fear and grief are ever-present realities.

A significant number of my pupils are now lost – minors who mentioned becoming physicians, creatives, and instructors. They were denied even the entitlement to survival. Those who are still here endure hunger, relocation and weariness – and however, they still maintain the thirst for knowledge.

Sometimes, when the connectivity allows, I hear from a small number of them. They message inquiring: “Are you safe, instructor?” We exchange short messages, short lessons, small glimmers of contact amid the chaos. They ask if situations will ever return to usual. I inform them I am uncertain.

All over this territory, educators, volunteers and charities try to teach wherever possible: in tents, destroyed learning spaces, or crowded shelters. Learning has become an demonstration of perseverance, a way to declare: “We persist.” And so long as we persist in education, we will endure.

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