🔗 Share this article

'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

Juwayriya Adwan, 12, Khan Younis

For the past two years since I was last inside a learning environment. That long since I heard the school chime at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, took my seat and answered questions during my preferred subject. At times I still clearly recall the auditory and olfactory sensations: powder from the board, pencil shavings, laughter echoing down the halls. But my school no longer exists; it was struck soon after the hostilities erupted. My learning materials incinerated, and several classmates lost.

I was in the fifth year on the seventh of October: the last day I went to school. That morning, air raid sirens screamed through the corridors. Some students wept, others held hands tightly. Our instructor sought to soothe, but even her voice trembled. I remember longing for a routine day; teaching, recess, a verse presentation. Instead, that day became the last page of my former reality.

The war has taken so much. But the hardest loss of all is education, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

Now I live with my parents, two brothers and female sibling in a congested safe space in Khan Younis. The tent walls move with air currents, providing no climate control. We queue for nourishment and hydration. Energy access is fantasy and personal space is absent. Hope feels fragile.

At night, I gaze toward the stars through the openings of my shelter and wonder if my peers see the identical heavens. Some contact me when they are able, expressing they miss school and have preserved their former exercise books; like treasures from a lost world. I feel guilty because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once dreamed of entering the education field to assist local youth learn, even when life was hard. Now I aim for being a writer – to write, to communicate and to reveal the world what it means to be a child in Gaza. I want to tell our stories of anxiety and deprivation, but also courage. Because even amid these conditions, amid fatality and debris, our expressions persist.

When connectivity is available, I endeavor to educate myself digitally. On other occasions, I attend a modest shelter where helpers educate us arithmetic and Arabic. The sessions are brief – the power fails or the bombing resumes but in such times, I feel alive. I recollect who I was: the girl who adored mathematics and poetry, who believed knowledge could alter reality.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our residences, learning centers and families. I mourned my uncle, his wife, and their young ones. I said goodbye to my beloved urban area, Rafah, which is merely debris now. But the toughest sacrifice of all is education, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

To the world, I express this: preserve our aspirations. Compassion isn't enough, we demand measures. Young residents merit literature, learning environments and protection. Schooling is not an extravagance, it is a essential privilege. The territory is not merely devastation; it is minors who persist in hoping beneath the drones at darkness. It is my story and I will continue writing, even if all I have left is a fractured utensil and a piece of torn paper.

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

Naglaa Weshah, forty, teacher in al-Bureij camp

I have been instructing in Gaza for more than a decade. First in that urban area, then in a different town, and currently in the central camp in the central Gaza Strip. Prior to hostilities, I regularly instructed several sets of about dozens of learners, nearly 240 young minds eager to learn.

Instructing them was my vocation and delight in reality, and I still recollect the gleam in a pupil's gaze when a concept was understood; the type of instance every instructor cherishes.

I always was convinced education should be dynamic. My learning environment was a area of play, aesthetics, and motion. We created cartographic art, dramatized bygone episodes, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Laughter always occupied the area as curiosity replaced apprehension. Indeed, even in earlier times, local youth were always afraid. My teaching space was a place of safety but after 7 October, all was altered.

My educational institution became a refuge for families running from the explosives. Soon, it was attacked and entirely ruined. There are very few educational facilities left standing in Gaza now. For this period, all has been unusual. The war has shattered every facet of our lives: security, dwellings, schools, hopes. Anxiety and sorrow are constant companions.

Numerous of my students are now deceased – minors who talked about dreaming of physicians, creatives, and instructors. They were denied even the privilege of living. Those who are still here live with malnutrition, displacement and fatigue – and yet, they still cling to the thirst for knowledge.

At times, when the connectivity enables, I receive messages from a small number of them. They write inquiring: “Are you OK, teacher?” We share short messages, short lessons, small glimmers of interaction amid the turmoil. They question if situations will ever revert to standard. I state to them I am uncertain.

Across this territory, educators, helpers and charities try to teach in any feasible location: in tents, destroyed learning spaces, or congested safe zones. Education has become an demonstration of perseverance, a way to declare: “Our presence continues.” And provided that we continue learning, we will remain.

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