🔗 Share this article

'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

Juwayriya Adwan, twelve, a temporary shelter

For the past 24 months since I was last inside a learning environment. Two years since I heard the start-of-class signal at the institution I attended, sat at my desk and raised my hand during my preferred subject. Sometimes I still distinctly recollect the auditory and olfactory sensations: writing residue, wooden scraps, laughter echoing down the halls. But my educational institution is gone; it was bombed not long after the war began. My learning materials incinerated, and some of my friends killed.

I was in fifth grade on the seventh of October: the last day I entered the school building. That beginning of the day, alert signals blared through the corridors. Some children cried, others held hands tightly. Our educator attempted reassurance, but even her voice trembled. I remember hoping for a ordinary day; instruction, break time, a poem recital. Instead, that day marked the end of my previous existence.

The war has taken so much. But the toughest sacrifice of all is schooling, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

Now I reside with my mother and father, two brothers and sister in a congested safe space in al-Mawasi. The shelter coverings move with air currents, providing no climate control. We wait in line for sustenance and drinks. Power is imaginary and seclusion is unavailable. Hope feels fragile.

At evening, I gaze toward the night lights through the holes of my shelter and question if my friends see the identical heavens. Some contact me when they can, stating they long for education and have preserved their old notebooks; like relics of a vanished time. I feel guilty because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once envisioned becoming a teacher to assist young residents study, even when existence was challenging. Now I aim for being a reporter – to write, to speak and to demonstrate the world what it means to be a child in this region. I want to share our experiences of fear and hunger, but also courage. Because even amid these conditions, amid loss and destruction, our words continue.

When there’s some internet, I try to study via the web. Sometimes, I attend a modest shelter where aid workers instruct us arithmetic and Arabic. The lessons are short – the power fails or the bombing resumes but in these instances, I feel alive. I recollect who I was: the girl who loved numbers and poems, who was convinced education could transform society.

The war has taken so much; our residences, schools and families. I lost my uncle, his partner, and their young ones. I lost my cherished hometown, that southern city, which is nothing but rubble now. But the toughest sacrifice of all is schooling, because without it, our prospects disappear.

To the international community, I express this: keep our hopes alive. Compassion isn't enough, we want action. Gaza’s children are entitled to books, learning environments and protection. Schooling is not a luxury, it is a essential privilege. The territory is not just ruins; it is minors who still dream under aerial surveillance at night. It is my account and I will keep drafting, even if the sole items remaining is a damaged writing tool 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 over ten years. Originally in a southern city, then in a different town, and now in al-Bureij camp in the central Gaza Strip. Prior to hostilities, I used to teach several sets of about fourty pupils per class, almost two hundred forty individuals enthusiastic about knowledge.

Educating them was my vocation and delight in existence, and I still recollect the sparkle in a learner's look when a new idea clicked; the kind of moment every educator cherishes.

I always believed instruction should be full of life. My classroom was a space of play, art, and movement. We painted maps, dramatized bygone episodes, and converted teaching into tales.

Merriment always permeated the space as curiosity displaced apprehension. Certainly, even prior to conflict, local youth were always afraid. My teaching space was a secure location but after the seventh, all was altered.

My educational institution became a shelter for families escaping the aerial attacks. Soon, it was attacked and totally demolished. There are almost no educational facilities remaining intact in Gaza now. For 24 months, everything has been abnormal. The hostilities has shattered every facet of our reality: protection, homes, schools, aspirations. Anxiety and sorrow are constant companions.

Many of my pupils are now deceased – minors who mentioned dreaming of medical professionals, creatives, and educators. They were deprived even the right to exist. Those who remain experience starvation, eviction and fatigue – and however, they still hold onto the will to learn.

Occasionally, when the online access permits, I get in touch with a few of them. They message inquiring: “Are you OK, teacher?” We communicate brief words, abbreviated teaching, minor flashes of connection amid the disorder. They inquire if things will ever return to usual. I inform them I don’t know.

Throughout this territory, instructors, aid workers and organizations try to teach in any feasible location: in shelters, damaged classrooms, or congested safe zones. Education has become an act of defiance, a way to express: “Our presence continues.” And provided that we persist in education, we will endure.

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