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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

A young student, 12, a temporary shelter

For the past 24 months since I stepped into a real classroom. That long since I listened to the morning bell at the institution I attended, occupied my place and participated actively during my beloved lesson. At times I still distinctly recollect the auditory and olfactory sensations: chalk dust, sharpener leftovers, joyful sounds in corridors. But my educational institution is gone; it was struck soon after the war began. My learning materials incinerated, and some of my friends killed.

I was in elementary level on the seventh of October: the concluding day I attended classes. That morning, warning alarms sounded through the corridors. Some students wept, others clasped palms firmly. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even she sounded shaky. I remember wishing for a ordinary day; lessons, break time, a literary performance. Instead, that day marked the end of my old life.

The war has taken so much. But the most painful deprivation of all is learning, because that is the loss of the future itself.

Now I dwell alongside my parents, two brothers and sister in a crowded shelter in Khan Younis. The tent walls sway with breezes, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We line up for water and food. Energy access is fantasy and personal space is absent. Aspiration appears brittle.

At darkness, I gaze toward the stars through the openings of my temporary home and question if my companions see the same sky. Some reach out when they manage, expressing they long for education and have preserved their previous journals; like relics of a vanished time. I feel remorseful because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once aspired to pursuing pedagogy to support young residents learn, even when existence was challenging. Now I dream of being a journalist – to compose, to communicate and to reveal the world what it represents to be a child in the Strip. I want to narrate our accounts of fear and hunger, but also courage. Because even here, amid loss and destruction, our voices refuse to be silent.

When connectivity is available, I try to study online. Sometimes, I visit a small tent where aid workers instruct us arithmetic and Arabic. The lessons are short – the energy supply stops or the airstrikes begin again but in those moments, I feel alive. I recollect who I was: the student who loved numbers and poems, who was convinced knowledge could alter reality.

The war has taken so much; our dwellings, learning centers and relatives. I mourned my paternal relative, his wife, and their offspring. I forfeited my cherished hometown, that southern city, which is nothing but rubble now. But the toughest sacrifice of all is learning, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

To the global audience, I express this: preserve our aspirations. Compassion isn't enough, we demand measures. Young residents merit literature, learning environments and security. Education is not optional, it is a essential privilege. The territory is not only destruction; it is youth who still dream 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?"'.

An educator, forty, teacher in a refugee camp

I have been educating in this area for more than a decade. Originally in Khan Younis, then in a different town, and currently in al-Bureij camp in the middle of the territory. Prior to hostilities, I typically educated six classes of about fourty pupils per class, almost two hundred forty individuals keen on education.

Instructing them was my mission and happiness in reality, and I still recall the gleam in a learner's look when a new idea clicked; the sort of occasion every educator lives for.

I always believed learning should be vibrant. My classroom was a area of amusement, art, and movement. We painted maps, acted out historical events, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Joy always occupied the area as interest replaced apprehension. Certainly, even before the war, local youth were always scared. My classroom was a protected zone but after the seventh, all was altered.

My educational institution became a safe haven for relatives fleeing the aerial attacks. Not long later, it was targeted and totally demolished. There are hardly any schools still erect in the region now. For this period, everything has been abnormal. The conflict has destroyed every part of our existence: safety, homes, schools, hopes. Fear and grief are perpetual experiences.

Many of my students are now deceased – minors who spoke of aspiring to be doctors, creatives, and educators. They were denied even the right to exist. Those who are still here endure hunger, relocation and exhaustion – and however, they still maintain the will to learn.

Sometimes, when the internet allows, I receive messages from a few of them. They contact inquiring: “How are you, educator?” We share concise phrases, abbreviated teaching, minor flashes of connection amid the disorder. They question if situations will ever go back to normal. I tell them I have no answer.

Across Gaza, teachers, helpers and non-profits endeavor education in all available spaces: in temporary structures, destroyed learning spaces, or crowded shelters. Schooling has become an gesture of resistance, a way to express: “Our presence continues.” And as long as we persist in education, we will endure.

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