🔗 Share this article

'We seek action, not sympathy'.

A young student, 12, al-Mawasi

It has been two years since I was last inside a proper school. Two years since I listened to the start-of-class signal at my former school, took my seat and participated actively during my favourite class. Occasionally I still clearly recall the familiar scents and noises: writing residue, wooden scraps, joyful sounds in corridors. But my learning place was destroyed; it was struck shortly after the conflict started. My learning materials incinerated, and companions perished.

I was in fifth grade on the seventh of October: the concluding day I attended classes. That beginning of the day, alert signals sounded through the corridors. Some pupils sobbed, others gripped each other. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even her tone wavered. I remember hoping for a routine day; instruction, intermission, a literary performance. Instead, that day became the last page of my previous existence.

Conflict has stolen countless things. But the hardest loss of all is schooling, because that is the loss of the future itself.

Now I reside with my guardians, male relatives and female sibling in a crowded shelter in al-Mawasi. The tent walls flap in the wind, failing to insulate. We wait in line for nourishment and hydration. Power is imaginary and personal space is absent. Optimism seems delicate.

At night, I observe the night lights through the gaps of my shelter and ponder if my friends see the identical heavens. Some reach out when they can, expressing they miss school and have kept their former exercise books; like valuables from a bygone era. 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 circumstances were difficult. Now I hope for being a journalist – to draft, to communicate and to show the world what it represents to be a young person in the Strip. I want to narrate our accounts of apprehension and need, but also fortitude. Because even in this place, amid death and ruins, our words continue.

When connectivity is available, I try to study online. Other times, I attend a modest shelter where volunteers instruct us mathematics and language. The instruction is limited – the energy supply stops or the attacks recommence but in those moments, I feel alive. I recollect who I was: the young woman who loved numbers and poems, who thought knowledge could alter reality.

The war has taken so much; our dwellings, educational institutions and families. I grieved for my family member, his spouse, and their young ones. I said goodbye to my cherished hometown, that southern city, which is nothing but rubble now. But the hardest loss of all is learning, because without it, our prospects disappear.

To the international community, I express this: keep our hopes alive. We don’t want pity, we want action. Gaza’s children are entitled to literature, educational facilities and security. Learning is not an extravagance, it is a fundamental entitlement. Gaza is not merely devastation; it is youth who continue to aspire beneath the drones at darkness. It is my story and I will keep drafting, even if my only possessions is a damaged writing tool and a fragment of ripped sheet.

'Pupils inquire: "Are you alright, educator?"'.

Naglaa Weshah, 40, instructor in central Gaza

I have been instructing in this area for more than a decade. Initially in Khan Younis, then in another location, and currently in this refugee settlement in the central Gaza Strip. In pre-conflict times, I used to teach several sets of about dozens of learners, hundreds of eager students keen on education.

Educating them was my vocation and delight in reality, and I still recollect the twinkle in a pupil's gaze when a knowledge was acquired; the sort of occasion every instructor lives for.

I always believed education should be dynamic. My teaching space was a area of recreation, art, and movement. We designed geographical illustrations, dramatized bygone episodes, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Joy always filled the room as curiosity substituted fear. Yes, even in earlier times, local youth were always scared. My classroom was a secure location but after the seventh, all was altered.

My learning center became a shelter for families running from the bombs. Soon, it was attacked and totally demolished. There are hardly any educational facilities still erect in Gaza now. For two years, nothing has been normal. The hostilities has shattered every part of our existence: security, residences, learning places, dreams. Anxiety and sorrow are constant companions.

Numerous of my learners are now lost – children who mentioned becoming physicians, artists, and instructors. They were deprived even the right to exist. Those who are still here experience malnutrition, displacement and fatigue – and nevertheless, they still hold onto the desire for education.

Sometimes, when the internet allows, I get in touch with a small number of them. They message asking: “How are you, teacher?” We share short messages, miniature instruction, minor flashes of contact amid the disorder. They question if circumstances will ever return to usual. I inform them I have no answer.

Across this territory, teachers, aid workers and organizations attempt instruction wherever possible: in tents, damaged classrooms, or congested safe zones. Schooling has become an demonstration of perseverance, a way to express: “We are still here.” And so long as we keep acquiring knowledge, we will endure.

A significant number of us are also guardians. I am a mother of {three|several