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'Our plea is for action, not compassion'.

Juwayriya Adwan, twelve, a temporary shelter

It has been 24 months since I was last inside a proper school. That long since I listened to the school chime at the institution I attended, occupied my place and raised my hand during my preferred subject. Sometimes I still clearly recall the sounds and smells: writing residue, sharpener leftovers, laughter echoing down the halls. But my educational institution is gone; it was struck not long after the conflict started. My learning materials incinerated, and several classmates lost.

I was in the fifth year on that fateful day: the last day I went to school. That beginning of the day, air raid sirens screamed through the halls. Some pupils sobbed, others gripped each other. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even her voice trembled. I remember longing for a ordinary day; teaching, break time, a poem recital. Instead, that day became the last page of my former reality.

Conflict has stolen countless things. But the toughest sacrifice of all is education, because that is the loss of the future itself.

Now I reside with my parents, two brothers and sister in a crowded shelter in al-Mawasi. The temporary partitions move with air currents, providing no climate control. We wait in line for sustenance and drinks. Energy access is fantasy and personal space is absent. Aspiration appears brittle.

At evening, I look up at the stars through the gaps of my shelter and ponder if my friends see the identical heavens. Some message me when they are able, stating they miss school and have retained their previous journals; like valuables from a bygone era. I feel guilty because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once aspired to entering the education field to support Gaza’s children study, even when life was hard. Now I dream of being a journalist – to compose, to speak and to demonstrate the world what it represents to be a child in Gaza. I want to narrate our accounts of fear and hunger, but also courage. Because even here, amid fatality and debris, our words continue.

When online access exists, I endeavor to educate myself online. Other times, I visit a small tent where aid workers instruct us mathematics and language. The lessons are short – the electricity cuts out or the airstrikes begin again but in those moments, I feel alive. I recollect who I was: the girl who cherished arithmetic and verse, who believed learning could change the world.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our dwellings, educational institutions and relatives. I grieved for my uncle, his partner, and their children. I lost my beautiful city, my previous home, which is only ruins now. But the toughest sacrifice of all is education, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the global audience, I express this: preserve our aspirations. We seek no sympathy, we demand measures. The youth deserve texts, schools and security. Schooling is not an extravagance, it is a fundamental entitlement. Gaza is not only destruction; it is children who persist in hoping amid unmanned aircraft at night. It is my narrative and I will persist in composing, even if my only possessions is a broken pencil and a fragment of ripped sheet.

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

Naglaa Weshah, 40, instructor in al-Bureij camp

I have been teaching in Gaza for a substantial period. First in a southern city, then in a different town, and now in this refugee settlement in the middle of the territory. In pre-conflict times, I typically educated several sets of about fourty pupils per class, hundreds of eager students keen on education.

Instructing them was my mission and happiness in life, and I still recall the twinkle in a pupil's gaze when a concept was understood; the type of instance every educator cherishes.

I always believed instruction should be full of life. My teaching space was a zone of amusement, aesthetics, and activity. We created cartographic art, acted out historical events, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Joy always occupied the area as curiosity substituted apprehension. Certainly, even before the war, young residents were always scared. My classroom was a protected zone but after 7 October, all was altered.

My learning center became a refuge for relatives escaping the bombs. Not long later, it was attacked and totally demolished. There are almost no schools remaining intact in the region now. For two years, nothing has been normal. The conflict has destroyed every part of our lives: safety, residences, schools, dreams. Fear and grief are constant companions.

Numerous of my learners are now dead – children who mentioned dreaming of physicians, creatives, and instructors. They were deprived even the right to exist. Those who survive endure hunger, displacement and weariness – and nevertheless, they still hold onto the will to learn.

Sometimes, when the internet enables, I receive messages from a few of them. They write questioning: “How are you, instructor?” We communicate concise phrases, abbreviated teaching, tiny sparks of interaction amid the disorder. They question if situations will ever return to usual. I inform them I have no answer.

Across this territory, instructors, aid workers and charities attempt instruction in all available spaces: in shelters, destroyed learning spaces, or congested safe zones. Education has become an demonstration of perseverance, a way to say: “We persist.” And provided that we keep acquiring knowledge, we will persist.

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