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'Our plea is for action, not compassion'.

A young student, twelve, Khan Younis

It has been two years since I was last inside a real classroom. Two years since I listened to the school chime at the institution I attended, took my seat and raised my hand during my favourite class. Occasionally I still vividly remember the familiar scents and noises: writing residue, wooden scraps, cheerful echoes. But my educational institution is gone; it was bombed not long after the war began. My learning materials incinerated, and several classmates lost.

I was in fifth grade on 7 October: the final day I went to school. That beginning of the day, alert signals sounded through the passageways. Some children cried, others held hands tightly. Our instructor sought to soothe, but even her voice trembled. I remember hoping for a normal day; instruction, intermission, a literary performance. Instead, that day signaled the conclusion of my former reality.

The war has taken so much. But the hardest loss of all is education, because without it, our prospects disappear.

Now I dwell alongside my mother and father, two brothers and female sibling in a crowded shelter in Khan Younis. The tent walls move with air currents, failing to insulate. We queue for water and food. Electricity is a dream and privacy doesn’t exist. Aspiration appears brittle.

At evening, I look up at the stars through the gaps of my shelter and wonder if my friends see the comparable vista. Some reach out when they can, stating they long for education and have preserved their old notebooks; like valuables from a bygone era. I feel remorseful because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once dreamed of becoming a teacher to help Gaza’s children learn, even when life was hard. Now I dream of being a writer – to write, to talk and to show the world what it represents to be a child in the Strip. I want to share our experiences of apprehension and need, but also fortitude. Because even in this place, amid loss and destruction, our words continue.

When connectivity is available, I attempt learning via the web. Other times, I attend a tiny space where aid workers teach us math and Arabic. The sessions are brief – the power fails or the bombing resumes but in such times, I feel alive. I recall who I was: the student who cherished arithmetic and verse, who thought education could transform society.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our dwellings, schools and kin. I lost my uncle, his spouse, and their young ones. I forfeited my cherished hometown, my previous home, which is merely debris now. But the hardest loss of all is learning, because without it, our prospects disappear.

To the world, I say this: keep our hopes alive. We seek no sympathy, we demand measures. Young residents deserve literature, educational facilities and protection. Schooling is not a luxury, it is a basic right. This region is not only destruction; it is children who continue to aspire beneath the drones at darkness. It is my account and I will persist in composing, even if my only possessions is a fractured utensil and a scrap of damaged material.

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

An educator, forty, instructor in al-Bureij camp

I have been educating in the region for more than a decade. First in a southern city, then in another location, and presently in this refugee settlement in the central Gaza Strip. Before the war started, I typically educated six classes of about 40 students each, almost two hundred forty individuals enthusiastic about knowledge.

Teaching them was my purpose and joy in life, and I still recollect the twinkle in a learner's look when a knowledge was acquired; the type of instance every instructor strives for.

I always thought instruction should be full of life. My teaching space was a zone of play, aesthetics, and movement. We painted maps, performed past occurrences, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Laughter always permeated the space as inquisitiveness substituted fear. Indeed, even in earlier times, young residents were always scared. My classroom was a place of safety but after the seventh, everything changed.

My school became a shelter for relatives escaping the explosives. Shortly after, it was targeted and totally demolished. There are hardly any schools remaining intact in Gaza now. For this period, nothing has been normal. The hostilities has shattered every facet of our reality: safety, residences, learning places, aspirations. Apprehension and mourning are constant companions.

Numerous of my students are now deceased – youth who mentioned becoming medical professionals, creatives, and teachers. They were refused even the privilege of living. Those who remain experience hunger, displacement and exhaustion – and yet, they still maintain the thirst for knowledge.

At times, when the internet allows, I receive messages from a few of them. They message asking: “Are you OK, educator?” We exchange short messages, abbreviated teaching, tiny sparks of interaction amid the disorder. They ask if things will ever go back to normal. I tell them I have no answer.

All over this territory, educators, volunteers and charities try to teach wherever possible: in tents, destroyed learning spaces, or packed refuges. Schooling has become an act of defiance, a way to say: “Our presence continues.” And provided that we keep acquiring knowledge, we will endure.

A significant number of us are also parents. I am a guardian of {three|several