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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

Juwayriya Adwan, 12, a temporary shelter

For the past 24 months since I was last inside a proper school. Two years since I heard the morning bell at my former school, took my seat and participated actively during my favourite class. At times I still distinctly recollect the familiar scents and noises: writing residue, sharpener leftovers, laughter echoing down the halls. But my learning place was destroyed; it was bombed soon after the hostilities erupted. My learning materials incinerated, and several classmates lost.

I was in the fifth year on that fateful day: the concluding day I attended classes. That early hours, alert signals blared through the halls. Some pupils sobbed, others clasped palms firmly. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even she sounded shaky. I remember longing for a normal day; lessons, break time, a literary performance. Instead, that day signaled the conclusion of my former reality.

Conflict has stolen countless things. But the most painful deprivation of all is education, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

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

At darkness, I gaze toward the celestial bodies through the gaps of my temporary home and question if my friends see the identical heavens. Some contact me when they manage, expressing they yearn for classes and have preserved their previous journals; like valuables from a bygone era. I feel guilty because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once aspired to becoming a teacher to help local youth acquire knowledge, even when life was hard. Now I aim for being a journalist – to compose, to speak and to demonstrate the world what it represents to be a child in this region. I want to narrate our accounts of anxiety and deprivation, but also bravery. Because even amid these conditions, amid loss and destruction, our expressions persist.

When online access exists, I endeavor to educate myself digitally. Sometimes, I go to a modest shelter where aid workers teach us math and Arabic. The instruction is limited – the energy supply stops or the airstrikes begin again but in those moments, I feel alive. I recall who I was: the young woman who cherished arithmetic and verse, who thought learning could change the world.

The war has taken so much; our homes, learning centers and relatives. I mourned my family member, his partner, and their young ones. I forfeited my cherished hometown, Rafah, which is nothing but rubble now. But the hardest loss of all is learning, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

To the world, I express this: keep our hopes alive. Compassion isn't enough, we require steps. Young residents are entitled to literature, schools and protection. Learning is not a luxury, it is a fundamental entitlement. The territory is not just ruins; it is children who still dream under aerial surveillance at night. It is my narrative and I will persist in composing, even if the sole items remaining is a broken pencil and a scrap of damaged material.

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

Naglaa Weshah, 40, teacher in al-Bureij camp

I have been instructing in Gaza for a substantial period. First in that urban area, then in a different town, and now in this refugee settlement in the middle of the territory. Prior to hostilities, I used to teach several sets of about dozens of learners, hundreds of eager students keen on education.

Teaching them was my mission and happiness in life, and I still recall the sparkle in a learner's look when a new idea clicked; the type of instance every teacher cherishes.

I always believed education should be dynamic. My teaching space was a space of play, aesthetics, and motion. We painted maps, acted out historical events, and turned lessons into stories.

Laughter always occupied the area as curiosity displaced fear. Indeed, even in earlier times, young residents were always afraid. My learning environment was a secure location but after the seventh, the situation transformed.

My educational institution became a refuge for households fleeing the bombs. Soon, it was struck and entirely ruined. There are very few educational facilities remaining intact in this area now. For 24 months, everything has been abnormal. The conflict has broken every part of our existence: safety, dwellings, schools, dreams. Fear and grief are constant companions.

A significant number of my learners are now deceased – children who talked about aspiring to be doctors, painters, and teachers. They were deprived even the right to exist. Those who remain live with malnutrition, relocation and weariness – and yet, they still cling to the desire for education.

Sometimes, when the online access enables, I receive messages from a handful of them. They message inquiring: “Are you OK, teacher?” We communicate concise phrases, miniature instruction, minor flashes of contact amid the chaos. They inquire if things will ever return to usual. I tell them I have no answer.

Across the region, instructors, helpers and charities endeavor education in any feasible location: in shelters, destroyed learning spaces, or crowded shelters. Schooling has become an demonstration of perseverance, a way to declare: “We persist.” And provided that we persist in education, we will remain.

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