🔗 Share this article

'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

Juwayriya Adwan, twelve, al-Mawasi

It has been two years since I stepped into a real classroom. That long since I listened to the morning bell at my former school, took my seat and participated actively during my preferred subject. Sometimes I still clearly recall the auditory and olfactory sensations: chalk dust, pencil shavings, joyful sounds in corridors. But my school no longer exists; it was bombed soon after the war began. My textbooks turned to ash, and companions perished.

I was in fifth grade on the seventh of October: the concluding day I entered the school building. That beginning of the day, alert signals sounded through the passageways. Some pupils sobbed, others clasped palms firmly. Our instructor sought to soothe, but even her voice trembled. I remember longing for a normal day; teaching, intermission, a literary performance. Instead, that day signaled the conclusion of my former reality.

Conflict has stolen countless things. But the toughest sacrifice of all is learning, because that is the loss of the future itself.

Now I reside with my mother and father, male relatives and female sibling in a crowded shelter in this coastal area. The shelter coverings flap in the wind, failing to insulate. We line up for nourishment and hydration. Power is imaginary and seclusion is unavailable. Aspiration appears brittle.

At night, I observe the night lights through the holes of my shelter and wonder if my friends see the same sky. Some message me when they can, stating they long for education and have retained their old notebooks; like treasures from a lost world. I feel remorseful because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once aspired to pursuing pedagogy to help young residents acquire knowledge, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I hope for being a writer – to draft, to speak and to reveal the world what it means to be a young person in this region. I want to narrate our accounts of fear and hunger, but also courage. Because even amid these conditions, amid death and ruins, our voices refuse to be silent.

When there’s some internet, I attempt learning online. Sometimes, I attend a small tent where aid workers educate us mathematics and language. The lessons are short – the electricity cuts out or the airstrikes begin again but in these instances, I feel alive. I recollect who I was: the student who cherished arithmetic and verse, who thought learning could change the world.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our residences, schools and relatives. I lost my uncle, his spouse, and their young ones. I lost my cherished hometown, that southern city, which is only ruins now. But the most painful deprivation of all is education, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the global audience, I express this: don’t let our dreams die. Compassion isn't enough, we require steps. Young residents deserve texts, educational facilities and safety. Education is not an extravagance, it is a basic right. Gaza is not only destruction; it is minors who persist in hoping under aerial surveillance at evening. It is my narrative and I will keep drafting, even if the sole items remaining is a fractured utensil and a piece of torn paper.

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

An educator, forty, instructor in al-Bureij camp

I have been instructing in the region for more than a decade. Originally in Khan Younis, then in another location, and presently in the central camp in the heart of the region. In pre-conflict times, I used to teach several sets of about fourty pupils per class, almost two hundred forty individuals enthusiastic about knowledge.

Instructing them was my purpose and joy in life, and I still recall the gleam in a learner's look when a new idea clicked; the sort of occasion every instructor cherishes.

I always thought instruction should be full of life. My classroom was a zone of amusement, art, and activity. We designed geographical illustrations, acted out historical events, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Merriment always permeated the space as curiosity displaced apprehension. Yes, even prior to conflict, local youth were always frightened. My classroom was a place of safety but after 7 October, everything changed.

My learning center became a refuge for households escaping the bombs. Shortly after, it was attacked and totally demolished. There are very few schools left standing in Gaza now. For this period, nothing has been normal. The hostilities has broken every part of our reality: protection, dwellings, schools, dreams. Anxiety and sorrow are perpetual experiences.

Numerous of my learners are now dead – children who mentioned aspiring to be medical professionals, artists, and teachers. They were denied even the entitlement to survival. Those who survive live with hunger, displacement and exhaustion – and yet, they still hold onto the desire for education.

At times, when the connectivity permits, I get in touch with a small number of them. They write questioning: “Are you safe, educator?” We exchange brief words, short lessons, tiny sparks of connection amid the turmoil. They question if circumstances will ever revert to standard. I state to them I don’t know.

Across Gaza, instructors, volunteers and organizations endeavor education wherever possible: in shelters, ruined educational areas, or congested safe zones. Schooling has become an gesture of resistance, a way to say: “We are still here.” And provided that we persist in education, we will persist.

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