🔗 Share this article

'We seek action, not sympathy'.

Juwayriya Adwan, 12, Khan Younis

For the past two years since I entered a learning environment. Two years since I heard the start-of-class signal at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, sat at my desk and participated actively during my preferred subject. Sometimes I still clearly recall the auditory and olfactory sensations: powder from the board, wooden scraps, laughter echoing down the halls. But my educational institution is gone; it was struck not long after the hostilities erupted. My textbooks turned to ash, and companions perished.

I was in the fifth year on 7 October: the last day I went to school. That beginning of the day, air raid sirens screamed through the passageways. Some pupils sobbed, others held hands tightly. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even she sounded shaky. I remember wishing for a routine day; instruction, intermission, a verse presentation. Instead, that day became the last page of my former reality.

The war has taken so much. But the most painful deprivation of all is schooling, because that is the loss of the future itself.

Now I dwell alongside my parents, two brothers and female sibling in a congested safe space in this coastal area. The shelter coverings move with air currents, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We queue for sustenance and drinks. Electricity is a dream and seclusion is unavailable. Hope feels fragile.

At evening, I look up at the celestial bodies through the openings of my tent and ponder if my friends see the comparable vista. Some contact me when they can, expressing they long for education and have retained their former exercise books; like valuables from a bygone era. I feel ashamed because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once aspired to pursuing pedagogy to help young residents study, even when existence was challenging. Now I aim for being a writer – to write, to speak and to reveal the world what it signifies to be a child in the Strip. I want to narrate our accounts of anxiety and deprivation, but also courage. Because even here, amid loss and destruction, our voices refuse to be silent.

When there’s some internet, I endeavor to educate myself via the web. Other times, I visit a small tent where aid workers instruct us mathematics and language. The sessions are brief – the energy supply stops or the bombing resumes but in these instances, 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 homes, learning centers and relatives. I mourned my uncle, his partner, and their children. I said goodbye to my beloved urban area, Rafah, which is only ruins now. But the toughest sacrifice of all is learning, because without it, our prospects disappear.

To the international community, I express this: preserve our aspirations. Compassion isn't enough, we require steps. The youth are entitled to books, schools and security. Education is not an extravagance, it is a basic right. Gaza is not merely devastation; it is youth who still dream beneath the drones at night. It is my story and I will continue writing, even if all I have left is a fractured utensil and a fragment of ripped sheet.

'Students ask: "Teacher, are you safe?"'.

Naglaa Weshah, forty, teacher in a refugee camp

I have been educating in the region for a substantial period. First in that urban area, then in a different town, and currently in this refugee settlement in the central Gaza Strip. Prior to hostilities, I used to teach six classes of about dozens of learners, hundreds of eager students enthusiastic about knowledge.

Educating them was my purpose and joy in reality, and I still recollect the gleam in a student’s eyes when a knowledge was acquired; the type of instance every instructor strives for.

I always thought instruction should be full of life. My learning environment was a area of play, art, and movement. We painted maps, acted out historical events, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Merriment always filled the room as curiosity replaced apprehension. Indeed, even prior to conflict, local youth were always scared. My teaching space was a secure location but after 7 October, the situation transformed.

My learning center became a safe haven for relatives escaping the bombs. Soon, it was struck and entirely ruined. There are almost no learning institutions left standing in this area now. For this period, all has been unusual. The hostilities has destroyed every facet of our reality: security, residences, educational centers, hopes. Anxiety and sorrow are perpetual experiences.

Many of my students are now dead – children who talked about dreaming of doctors, creatives, and teachers. They were denied even the privilege of living. Those who survive experience malnutrition, displacement and weariness – and nevertheless, they still cling to the desire for education.

Sometimes, when the online access allows, I get in touch with a small number of them. They contact asking: “Are you OK, teacher?” We communicate brief words, abbreviated teaching, small glimmers of connection amid the chaos. They question if circumstances will ever revert to standard. I inform them I don’t know.

Throughout Gaza, instructors, aid workers and non-profits try to teach wherever possible: in tents, destroyed learning spaces, or congested safe zones. Education has become an gesture of resistance, a way to declare: “We are still here.” And provided that we persist in education, we will remain.

Numerous of us are also caregivers. I am a parent of {three|several