'Our plea is for action, not compassion'.
Juwayriya Adwan, 12, a temporary shelter
For the past two years since I entered a learning environment. Two years since I listened to the school chime at the institution I attended, occupied my place and raised my hand during my beloved lesson. At times I still clearly recall the sounds and smells: powder from the board, wooden scraps, cheerful echoes. But my educational institution is gone; it was struck soon after the conflict started. My books were burned, and some of my friends killed.
I was in elementary level on that fateful day: the concluding day I went to school. That morning, warning alarms screamed through the passageways. Some children cried, others held hands tightly. Our educator attempted reassurance, but even she sounded shaky. I remember longing for a normal day; lessons, intermission, a literary performance. Instead, that day marked the end of my previous existence.
The war has taken so much. But the hardest loss of all is learning, because without it, our prospects disappear.
Now I dwell alongside my mother and father, siblings and female sibling in a packed refuge in Khan Younis. The tent walls sway with breezes, failing to insulate. We line up for water and food. Power is imaginary and personal space is absent. Hope feels fragile.
At darkness, I gaze toward the stars through the gaps of my temporary home and question if my companions see the comparable vista. Some reach out when they are able, expressing they long for education and have kept their former exercise books; like valuables from a bygone era. I feel ashamed because I’ve lost all of mine.
I once dreamed of entering the education field to assist local youth learn, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I hope for being a journalist – to write, to talk and to show the world what it means to be a child in Gaza. I want to narrate our accounts of apprehension and need, but also bravery. Because even in this place, amid death and ruins, our expressions persist.
When online access exists, I try to study digitally. Other times, I go to a tiny space where aid workers instruct us math and Arabic. The lessons are short – the energy supply stops or the bombing resumes but in these instances, I experience vitality. I recall who I was: the young woman who cherished arithmetic and verse, who believed learning could change the world.
Hostilities have stolen countless aspects; our homes, educational institutions and families. I mourned my family member, his spouse, and their young ones. I lost my cherished hometown, that southern city, which is merely debris now. But the hardest loss of all is education, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.
To the world, I say this: don’t let our dreams die. We don’t want pity, we require steps. The youth merit texts, learning environments and safety. Schooling is not a luxury, it is a essential privilege. The territory is not just ruins; it is minors who persist in hoping under aerial surveillance at darkness. It is my account and I will persist in composing, even if all I have left is a damaged writing tool and a piece of torn paper.
'Students ask: "Teacher, are you safe?"'.
An educator, forty, teacher in a refugee camp
I have been educating in the region for a substantial period. First in Khan Younis, then in a different town, and now in the central camp in the central Gaza Strip. In pre-conflict times, I regularly instructed six classes of about 40 students each, almost two hundred forty individuals enthusiastic about knowledge.
Instructing them was my purpose and joy in reality, and I still recall the gleam in a student’s eyes when a concept was understood; the type of instance every instructor lives for.
I always believed education should be full of life. My teaching space was a space of amusement, aesthetics, and motion. We painted maps, dramatized bygone episodes, and converted teaching into tales.
Merriment always filled the room as interest substituted anxiety. Indeed, even before the war, children in Gaza were always frightened. My teaching space was a protected zone but after the seventh, the situation transformed.
My school became a shelter for households running from the bombs. Soon, it was struck and totally demolished. There are hardly any schools still erect in Gaza now. For this period, all has been unusual. The war has broken every aspect of our lives: security, dwellings, schools, dreams. Apprehension and mourning are ever-present realities.
Numerous of my pupils are now dead – minors who spoke of dreaming of medical professionals, painters, and teachers. They were deprived even the privilege of living. Those who remain endure malnutrition, relocation and exhaustion – and however, they still maintain the desire for education.
Occasionally, when the connectivity allows, I receive messages from a handful of them. They contact asking: “Are you OK, teacher?” We share concise phrases, miniature instruction, small glimmers of interaction amid the disorder. They inquire if things will ever revert to standard. I tell them I am uncertain.
All over Gaza, teachers, aid workers and organizations attempt instruction wherever possible: in shelters, damaged classrooms, or packed refuges. Learning has become an demonstration of perseverance, a way to declare: “We persist.” And as long as we continue learning, we will remain.
Many of us are also parents. I am a guardian of {three|several
