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'Our plea is for action, not compassion'.

Juwayriya Adwan, twelve, al-Mawasi

It has been 24 months since I entered a real classroom. Two years since I listened to the morning bell at the institution I attended, took my seat and answered questions during my beloved lesson. Sometimes I still vividly remember the sounds and smells: powder from the board, pencil shavings, cheerful echoes. But my learning place was destroyed; it was bombed shortly after the conflict started. My books were burned, and companions perished.

I was in elementary level on the seventh of October: the last day I entered the school building. That early hours, alert signals sounded through the corridors. Some students wept, others gripped each other. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even she sounded shaky. I remember wishing for a normal day; lessons, break time, a poem recital. Instead, that day became the last page of my previous existence.

Hostilities have claimed innumerable aspects. But the hardest loss of all is schooling, because without it, our prospects disappear.

Now I reside with my mother and father, siblings and sister in a congested safe space in this coastal area. The tent walls move with air currents, failing to insulate. We wait in line for water and food. Electricity is a dream and personal space is absent. Optimism seems delicate.

At evening, I look up at the celestial bodies through the gaps of my tent and question if my friends see the comparable vista. Some contact me when they are able, expressing they yearn for classes and have retained their previous journals; like relics of a vanished time. I feel remorseful because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once dreamed of entering the education field to support local youth study, even when existence was challenging. Now I dream of being a journalist – to write, to communicate and to reveal the world what it means to be a young person in this region. I want to narrate our accounts of anxiety and deprivation, but also bravery. Because even here, amid death and ruins, our voices refuse to be silent.

When connectivity is available, I endeavor to educate myself via the web. Sometimes, I attend a modest shelter where volunteers educate us mathematics and language. The instruction is limited – the power fails or the airstrikes begin again but in such times, I experience vitality. I recollect who I was: the student who cherished arithmetic and verse, who believed learning could change the world.

The war has taken so much; our homes, educational institutions and kin. I mourned my uncle, his spouse, and their children. I said goodbye to my cherished hometown, that southern city, which is merely debris now. But the toughest sacrifice of all is schooling, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

To the international community, I say this: preserve our aspirations. We don’t want pity, we want action. The youth are entitled to books, schools and safety. Schooling is not an extravagance, it is a basic right. This region is not only destruction; it is children who continue to aspire amid unmanned aircraft at evening. It is my account and I will keep drafting, even if my only possessions is a broken pencil and a scrap of damaged material.

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

Naglaa Weshah, forty, teacher in al-Bureij camp

I have been teaching in Gaza for over ten years. Initially in that urban area, then in another location, and now in this refugee settlement in the central Gaza Strip. Prior to hostilities, I regularly instructed multiple groups of about dozens of learners, nearly 240 young minds eager to learn.

Teaching them was my purpose and joy in reality, and I still recollect the sparkle in a pupil's gaze when a concept was understood; the kind of moment every instructor strives for.

I always was convinced instruction should be vibrant. My classroom was a space of amusement, art, and motion. We created cartographic art, dramatized bygone episodes, and converted teaching into tales.

Laughter always permeated the space as interest displaced fear. Indeed, even before the war, local youth were always afraid. My learning environment was a place of safety but after 7 October, everything changed.

My learning center became a refuge for households escaping the explosives. Not long later, it was attacked and entirely ruined. There are almost no learning institutions left standing in this area now. For this period, everything has been abnormal. The war has shattered every facet of our lives: safety, residences, learning places, hopes. Anxiety and sorrow are ever-present realities.

A significant number of my pupils are now deceased – children who talked about aspiring to be physicians, creatives, and teachers. They were denied even the entitlement to survival. Those who survive live with hunger, eviction and exhaustion – and yet, they still cling to the desire for education.

At times, when the internet enables, I hear from a small number of them. They message inquiring: “Are you OK, instructor?” We communicate short messages, short lessons, minor flashes of contact amid the turmoil. They ask if circumstances will ever go back to normal. I state to them I have no answer.

All over the region, instructors, aid workers and charities endeavor education in any feasible location: in tents, damaged classrooms, or congested safe zones. Schooling has become an gesture of resistance, a way to say: “We are still here.” And as long as we continue learning, we will remain.

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