🔗 Share this article

'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

Juwayriya Adwan, twelve, Khan Younis

For the past 24 months since I entered a real classroom. Two years since I heard the start-of-class signal at the institution I attended, took my seat and participated actively during my beloved lesson. At times I still vividly remember the sounds and smells: chalk dust, sharpener leftovers, 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 7 October: the last day I went to school. That beginning of the day, warning alarms blared through the halls. Some children cried, others clasped palms firmly. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even she sounded shaky. I remember longing for a normal day; instruction, break time, a poem recital. Instead, that day became the last page of my old life.

Hostilities have claimed innumerable aspects. But the hardest loss of all is schooling, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

Now I dwell alongside my guardians, two brothers and sister in a packed refuge in al-Mawasi. The temporary partitions move with air currents, providing no climate control. We line up for water and food. Electricity is a dream and personal space is absent. Optimism seems delicate.

At night, I look up at the stars through the openings of my tent and question if my companions see the comparable vista. Some contact me when they can, expressing they yearn for classes and have retained their old notebooks; like valuables from a bygone era. I feel remorseful because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once aspired to entering the education field to help local youth study, even when existence was challenging. Now I dream of being a reporter – to draft, to talk and to reveal the world what it signifies to be a young person in the Strip. I want to narrate our accounts of apprehension and need, but also fortitude. Because even here, amid death and ruins, our expressions persist.

When online access exists, I try to study online. On other occasions, I go to a tiny space where helpers educate us math and Arabic. The lessons are short – the electricity cuts out or the airstrikes begin again but in such times, I experience vitality. I recollect who I was: the student who adored mathematics and poetry, who thought learning could change the world.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our dwellings, educational institutions and families. I grieved for my uncle, his spouse, and their children. I lost my cherished hometown, that southern city, which is nothing but rubble now. But the hardest loss of all is schooling, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

To the world, I express this: keep our hopes alive. Compassion isn't enough, we want action. Gaza’s children are entitled to books, educational facilities and safety. Education is not optional, it is a fundamental entitlement. This region is not just ruins; it is youth who persist in hoping amid unmanned aircraft at evening. It is my story and I will persist in composing, even if all I have left is a damaged writing tool and a scrap of damaged material.

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

Naglaa Weshah, 40, teacher in al-Bureij camp

I have been instructing in the region for more than a decade. Originally in a southern city, then in another location, and now in al-Bureij camp in the heart of the region. Before the war started, I used to teach multiple groups of about fourty pupils per class, hundreds of eager students eager to learn.

Teaching them was my mission and happiness in existence, and I still recall the sparkle in a student’s eyes when a concept was understood; the type of instance every educator lives for.

I always was convinced education should be vibrant. My learning environment was a space of recreation, art, and activity. We painted maps, performed past occurrences, and turned lessons into stories.

Joy always permeated the space as curiosity substituted fear. Indeed, even in earlier times, local youth were always scared. My classroom was a secure location but after that day, all was altered.

My learning center became a refuge for households fleeing the aerial attacks. Not long later, it was targeted and completely destroyed. There are almost no schools still erect in this area now. For this period, all has been unusual. The war has destroyed every part of our lives: security, homes, learning places, dreams. Anxiety and sorrow are perpetual experiences.

Many of my pupils are now dead – children who talked about dreaming of doctors, painters, and educators. They were denied even the entitlement to survival. Those who are still here experience malnutrition, eviction and exhaustion – and however, they still hold onto the will to learn.

Sometimes, when the connectivity permits, I get in touch with a handful of them. They message questioning: “Are you OK, educator?” We share short messages, abbreviated teaching, small glimmers of interaction amid the chaos. They question if things will ever return to usual. I inform them I don’t know.

Across Gaza, teachers, helpers and charities try to teach in any feasible location: in tents, ruined educational areas, or crowded shelters. Schooling has become an gesture of resistance, a way to express: “We persist.” And provided that we keep acquiring knowledge, we will persist.

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