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'Our plea is for action, not compassion'.

A young student, 12, a temporary shelter

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 participated actively during my preferred subject. Sometimes I still vividly remember the familiar scents and noises: writing residue, pencil shavings, laughter echoing down the halls. But my learning place was destroyed; it was targeted soon after the conflict started. My learning materials incinerated, and several classmates lost.

I was in fifth grade on the seventh of October: the final day I went to school. That beginning of the day, air raid sirens blared through the halls. Some students wept, others gripped each other. Our instructor sought to soothe, but even she sounded shaky. I remember hoping for a routine day; lessons, intermission, a poem recital. Instead, that day signaled the conclusion of my previous existence.

Conflict has stolen countless things. But the toughest sacrifice of all is learning, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

Now I dwell alongside my parents, siblings and sister in a packed refuge in al-Mawasi. The shelter coverings flap in the wind, failing to insulate. We queue for nourishment and hydration. Power is imaginary and personal space is absent. Hope feels fragile.

At night, I gaze toward the celestial bodies through the gaps of my shelter and wonder if my companions see the same sky. Some message me when they manage, expressing they long for education and have preserved their previous journals; like valuables from a bygone era. I feel ashamed because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once envisioned becoming a teacher to assist local youth learn, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I aim for being a journalist – to write, to speak and to demonstrate the world what it signifies to be a young person in Gaza. I want to narrate our accounts of apprehension and need, but also fortitude. Because even in this place, amid loss and destruction, our voices refuse to be silent.

When connectivity is available, I try to study via the web. Sometimes, I visit a modest shelter where volunteers educate us mathematics and language. The lessons are short – the power fails or the bombing resumes but in these instances, I experience vitality. I recollect who I was: the student who adored mathematics and poetry, who believed education could transform society.

The war has taken so much; our dwellings, schools and families. I mourned my family member, his partner, and their offspring. I lost my cherished hometown, Rafah, which is nothing but rubble now. But the hardest loss of all is schooling, because without it, our prospects disappear.

To the global audience, I state this: don’t let our dreams die. Compassion isn't enough, we demand measures. Young residents are entitled to books, schools and security. Schooling is not a luxury, it is a basic right. Gaza is not just ruins; it is youth who still dream under aerial surveillance at evening. It is my account and I will persist in composing, even if my only possessions is a damaged writing tool and a piece of torn paper.

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

An educator, forty, teacher in al-Bureij camp

I have been instructing in Gaza for more than a decade. Initially in Khan Younis, then in a different town, and currently in al-Bureij camp in the heart of the region. Before the war started, I typically educated six classes of about fourty pupils per class, nearly 240 young minds eager to learn.

Instructing them was my purpose and joy in reality, and I still recall the sparkle in a pupil's gaze when a new idea clicked; the sort of occasion every teacher strives for.

I always was convinced instruction should be dynamic. My learning environment was a zone of amusement, art, and motion. We painted maps, acted out historical events, and turned lessons into stories.

Joy always permeated the space as interest substituted anxiety. Indeed, even prior to conflict, local youth were always frightened. My classroom was a protected zone but after that day, all was altered.

My learning center became a refuge for relatives running from the aerial attacks. Soon, it was attacked and entirely ruined. There are almost no schools still erect in this area now. For 24 months, everything has been abnormal. The hostilities has broken every part of our reality: protection, residences, educational centers, aspirations. Fear and grief are perpetual experiences.

Numerous of my students are now lost – minors who mentioned dreaming of doctors, painters, and instructors. They were refused even the entitlement to survival. Those who remain experience malnutrition, relocation and fatigue – and yet, they still cling to the desire for education.

Sometimes, when the connectivity allows, I receive messages from a few of them. They write questioning: “Are you OK, instructor?” We communicate short messages, abbreviated teaching, small glimmers of interaction amid the disorder. They inquire if circumstances will ever return to usual. I state to them I am uncertain.

Throughout Gaza, instructors, helpers and organizations attempt instruction in all available spaces: in tents, damaged classrooms, or congested safe zones. Schooling has become an act of defiance, a way to say: “We are still here.” And provided that we continue learning, we will persist.

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