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'Our plea is for action, not compassion'.

A young student, 12, al-Mawasi

It has been two years since I was last inside a learning environment. Two years since I listened to the start-of-class signal at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, took my seat and answered questions during my preferred subject. Occasionally I still clearly recall the auditory and olfactory sensations: powder from the board, pencil shavings, joyful sounds in corridors. But my learning place was destroyed; it was bombed not long after the war began. My learning materials incinerated, and some of my friends killed.

I was in the fifth year on that fateful day: the concluding day I attended classes. That beginning of the day, air raid sirens screamed through the passageways. Some pupils sobbed, others held hands tightly. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even her tone wavered. I remember hoping for a normal day; instruction, recess, a poem recital. Instead, that day became the last page of my previous existence.

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

Now I dwell alongside my guardians, male relatives and female sibling in a crowded shelter in al-Mawasi. The shelter coverings move with air currents, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We queue for sustenance and drinks. Power is imaginary and privacy doesn’t exist. Aspiration appears brittle.

At evening, I observe the night lights through the openings of my tent and question if my peers see the identical heavens. Some message me when they manage, expressing they miss school and have retained their former exercise books; like relics of a vanished time. I feel remorseful because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once aspired to entering the education field to assist young residents acquire knowledge, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I aim for being a reporter – to write, to communicate and to demonstrate the world what it signifies to be a child in the Strip. I want to share our experiences of fear and hunger, but also bravery. Because even amid these conditions, amid death and ruins, our words continue.

When connectivity is available, I try to study online. Sometimes, I attend a modest shelter where aid workers educate us mathematics and language. The sessions are brief – the energy supply stops or the bombing resumes but in these instances, I sense being. I recall who I was: the student who cherished arithmetic and verse, who was convinced education could transform society.

Hostilities have stolen countless aspects; our residences, schools and kin. I mourned my uncle, his partner, and their children. I lost my beloved urban area, that southern city, which is nothing but rubble now. But the hardest loss of all is learning, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the international community, I express this: preserve our aspirations. Compassion isn't enough, we want action. Gaza’s children merit literature, schools and protection. Learning is not optional, it is a basic right. Gaza is not just ruins; it is youth who continue to aspire amid unmanned aircraft at darkness. It is my account and I will continue writing, even if the sole items remaining is a fractured utensil and a piece of torn paper.

'They message: "are you OK, teacher?"'.

Naglaa Weshah, forty, instructor in central Gaza

I have been instructing in the region for a substantial period. First in a southern city, then in another location, and currently in this refugee settlement in the middle of the territory. In pre-conflict times, I typically educated six classes of about 40 students each, hundreds of eager students eager to learn.

Teaching them was my mission and happiness in reality, and I still recollect the twinkle in a student’s eyes when a knowledge was acquired; the sort of occasion every teacher strives for.

I always was convinced instruction should be dynamic. My classroom was a zone of amusement, art, and movement. We designed geographical illustrations, acted out historical events, and turned lessons into stories.

Joy always filled the room as curiosity substituted anxiety. Yes, even before the war, local youth were always afraid. My teaching space was a protected zone but after 7 October, all was altered.

My school became a shelter for families running from the aerial attacks. Not long later, it was attacked and completely destroyed. There are very few schools still erect in this area now. For two years, nothing has been normal. The war has shattered every aspect of our reality: protection, residences, schools, aspirations. Anxiety and sorrow are constant companions.

Numerous of my students are now lost – youth who talked about becoming doctors, painters, and educators. They were refused even the privilege of living. Those who are still here experience hunger, eviction and fatigue – and however, they still maintain the desire for education.

Occasionally, when the online access enables, I get in touch with a small number of them. They message asking: “How are you, educator?” We exchange brief words, abbreviated teaching, small glimmers of connection amid the disorder. They ask if situations will ever go back to normal. I inform them I don’t know.

Across this territory, educators, helpers and charities endeavor education wherever possible: in tents, destroyed learning spaces, or congested safe zones. Learning has become an gesture of resistance, a way to declare: “We persist.” And provided that we keep acquiring knowledge, we will persist.

Numerous of us are also parents. I am a parent of {three|several