🔗 Share this article

'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

A young student, twelve, al-Mawasi

It has been two years since I entered a learning environment. Two years since I listened to the morning bell at my former school, sat at my desk and answered questions during my beloved lesson. Occasionally I still vividly remember the auditory and olfactory sensations: chalk dust, sharpener leftovers, laughter echoing down the halls. But my learning place was destroyed; it was struck shortly after the conflict started. My books were burned, and several classmates lost.

I was in the fifth year on the seventh of October: the final day I attended classes. That morning, alert signals screamed through the corridors. Some students wept, others gripped each other. Our instructor sought to soothe, but even her voice trembled. I remember hoping for a ordinary day; teaching, break time, a verse presentation. Instead, that day became the last page of my previous existence.

Hostilities have claimed innumerable aspects. But the hardest loss of all is schooling, because without it, our prospects disappear.

Now I live with my mother and father, two brothers and sister in a crowded shelter in this coastal area. The temporary partitions sway with breezes, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We line up for water and food. Energy access is fantasy and privacy doesn’t exist. Optimism seems delicate.

At darkness, I gaze toward the celestial bodies through the holes of my temporary home and wonder if my peers see the identical heavens. Some contact me when they are able, expressing they miss school and have kept their former exercise books; like valuables from a bygone era. I feel remorseful because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once dreamed of entering the education field to support Gaza’s children learn, even when existence was challenging. Now I dream of being a journalist – to write, to speak and to show the world what it signifies to be a minor in Gaza. I want to narrate our accounts of anxiety and deprivation, but also bravery. Because even amid these conditions, amid death and ruins, our voices refuse to be silent.

When there’s some internet, I attempt learning digitally. On other occasions, I go to a tiny space where volunteers teach us mathematics and language. The instruction is limited – the power fails or the attacks recommence but in such times, I feel alive. I remember who I was: the girl who adored mathematics and poetry, who believed education could transform society.

Hostilities have stolen countless aspects; our homes, educational institutions and relatives. I mourned my family member, his wife, and their children. I lost my beautiful city, my previous home, which is only ruins now. But the hardest loss of all is learning, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

To the world, I state this: preserve our aspirations. We don’t want pity, we demand measures. Gaza’s children are entitled to literature, educational facilities and security. Learning is not optional, it is a essential privilege. This region is not just ruins; it is youth who still dream beneath the drones at evening. It is my story and I will continue writing, even if my only possessions is a fractured utensil and a fragment of ripped sheet.

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

An educator, forty, instructor in central Gaza

I have been teaching in this area for over ten years. First in that urban area, then in a different town, and presently in the central camp in the heart of the region. Prior to hostilities, I used to teach multiple groups of about fourty pupils per class, hundreds of eager students keen on education.

Instructing them was my vocation and delight in life, and I still recall the gleam in a student’s eyes when a new idea clicked; the kind of moment every teacher cherishes.

I always believed instruction should be dynamic. My teaching space was a area of amusement, creativity, and activity. We painted maps, dramatized bygone episodes, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Merriment always occupied the area as interest substituted anxiety. Yes, even before the war, young residents were always frightened. My classroom was a protected zone but after 7 October, all was altered.

My learning center became a refuge for households running from the bombs. Not long later, it was attacked and completely destroyed. There are very few learning institutions still erect in this area now. For two years, all has been unusual. The hostilities has destroyed every aspect of our existence: safety, residences, schools, dreams. Anxiety and sorrow are constant companions.

A significant number of my pupils are now deceased – youth who spoke of aspiring to be doctors, painters, and educators. They were deprived even the entitlement to survival. Those who survive experience malnutrition, displacement and weariness – and however, they still maintain the will to learn.

At times, when the connectivity allows, I get in touch with a handful of them. They message asking: “Are you OK, teacher?” We communicate short messages, short lessons, small glimmers of connection amid the chaos. They ask if situations will ever revert to standard. I inform them I am uncertain.

Across the region, teachers, aid workers and non-profits try to teach wherever possible: in tents, ruined educational areas, or packed refuges. Schooling has become an act of defiance, a way to declare: “We are still here.” And provided that we keep acquiring knowledge, we will remain.

Many of us are also guardians. I am a mother of {three|several