🔗 Share this article

'We seek action, not sympathy'.

Juwayriya Adwan, twelve, Khan Younis

It has been two years since I stepped into a learning environment. That long since I listened to the start-of-class signal at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, took my seat and raised my hand during my favourite class. Sometimes I still clearly recall the sounds and smells: writing residue, wooden scraps, laughter echoing down the halls. But my school no longer exists; it was bombed soon after the hostilities erupted. My learning materials incinerated, and companions perished.

I was in the fifth year on the seventh of October: the last day I entered the school building. That morning, alert signals blared through the corridors. Some students wept, others clasped palms firmly. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even she sounded shaky. I remember longing for a routine day; teaching, intermission, a literary performance. Instead, that day signaled the conclusion of my previous existence.

The war has taken so much. But the toughest sacrifice of all is schooling, because without it, our prospects disappear.

Now I reside with my parents, male relatives and sister in a congested safe space in al-Mawasi. The tent walls flap in the wind, failing to insulate. We line up for water and food. Energy access is fantasy and personal space is absent. Aspiration appears brittle.

At evening, I gaze toward the stars through the gaps of my temporary home and wonder if my peers see the same sky. Some message me when they are able, stating they yearn for classes and have preserved their old notebooks; like treasures from a lost world. I feel ashamed because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once aspired to becoming a teacher to support local youth acquire knowledge, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I hope for being a writer – to compose, to talk and to demonstrate the world what it means to be a minor in this region. I want to narrate our accounts of fear and hunger, but also fortitude. Because even amid these conditions, amid loss and destruction, our words continue.

When online access exists, I attempt learning online. Sometimes, I visit a small tent where helpers instruct us mathematics and language. The sessions are brief – the energy supply stops or the attacks recommence but in these instances, I feel alive. I recall who I was: the girl who cherished arithmetic and verse, who believed learning could change the world.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our residences, learning centers and relatives. I mourned my family member, his wife, and their young ones. I said goodbye to my cherished hometown, Rafah, which is nothing but rubble now. But the hardest loss of all is education, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

To the global audience, I express this: don’t let our dreams die. We don’t want pity, we demand measures. Young residents are entitled to literature, learning environments and protection. Education is not optional, it is a basic right. This region is not merely devastation; it is minors who continue to aspire amid unmanned aircraft at evening. It is my account and I will persist in composing, even if my only possessions is a broken pencil and a fragment of ripped sheet.

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

An educator, forty, instructor in al-Bureij camp

I have been teaching in the region for a substantial period. Initially in Khan Younis, then in Deir al-Balah, and currently in al-Bureij camp in the central Gaza Strip. Prior to hostilities, I typically educated multiple groups of about dozens of learners, hundreds of eager students eager to learn.

Teaching them was my vocation and delight in reality, and I still recall the gleam in a student’s eyes when a knowledge was acquired; the kind of moment every educator strives for.

I always was convinced learning should be vibrant. My classroom was a zone of play, creativity, and activity. We designed geographical illustrations, performed past occurrences, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Joy always permeated the space as inquisitiveness substituted apprehension. Certainly, even in earlier times, young residents were always scared. My learning environment was a protected zone but after 7 October, all was altered.

My learning center became a shelter for households running from the explosives. Soon, it was struck and completely destroyed. There are very few educational facilities remaining intact in the region now. For 24 months, nothing has been normal. The hostilities has destroyed every aspect of our reality: protection, homes, schools, dreams. Fear and grief are constant companions.

Numerous of my learners are now lost – youth who spoke of becoming physicians, artists, and instructors. They were deprived even the entitlement to survival. Those who remain live with hunger, eviction and weariness – and nevertheless, they still hold onto the thirst for knowledge.

At times, when the internet enables, I get in touch with a small number of them. They message questioning: “Are you safe, instructor?” We exchange brief words, short lessons, minor flashes of connection amid the disorder. They question if circumstances will ever return to usual. I inform them I don’t know.

All over Gaza, educators, aid workers and charities attempt instruction wherever possible: in temporary structures, destroyed learning spaces, or crowded shelters. Schooling has become an act of defiance, a way to say: “Our presence continues.” And provided that we continue learning, we will remain.

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