'When education is lost, the future vanishes': Palestinian Youth and Educators on Two Years Without School.

'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

Juwayriya Adwan, twelve, al-Mawasi

For the past two years since I was last inside a proper school. Two years since I heard 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: powder from the board, sharpener leftovers, laughter echoing down the halls. But my school no longer exists; it was targeted soon after the conflict started. My textbooks turned to ash, and several classmates lost.

I was in fifth grade on 7 October: the final day I went to school. That morning, alert signals screamed through the corridors. Some pupils sobbed, others gripped each other. Our instructor sought to soothe, but even she sounded shaky. I remember longing for a normal day; teaching, recess, a poem recital. Instead, that day became the last page of my old life.

Hostilities have claimed innumerable aspects. But the most painful deprivation of all is education, because that is the loss of the future itself.

Now I reside with my parents, two brothers and sister in a packed refuge in Khan Younis. The shelter coverings move with air currents, failing to insulate. We line up for water and food. Energy access is fantasy and personal space is absent. Aspiration appears brittle.

At evening, I observe the celestial bodies through the holes of my shelter and ponder if my peers see the identical heavens. Some message me when they can, expressing they yearn for classes and have preserved their previous journals; like relics of a vanished time. I feel remorseful because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once aspired to becoming a teacher to assist young residents learn, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I aim for being a reporter – to write, to communicate and to reveal the world what it represents to be a minor in this region. I want to narrate our accounts of apprehension and need, but also fortitude. Because even in this place, amid loss and destruction, our expressions persist.

When there’s some internet, I endeavor to educate myself digitally. Other times, I go to a modest shelter where aid workers educate us mathematics and language. The sessions are brief – the electricity cuts out 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 kin. I mourned my paternal relative, his wife, and their young ones. I said goodbye to my beautiful city, Rafah, which is nothing but rubble now. But the toughest sacrifice of all is schooling, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

To the world, I express this: preserve our aspirations. We don’t want pity, we demand measures. Gaza’s children deserve texts, schools and security. Schooling is not an extravagance, it is a essential privilege. This region is not only destruction; it is children who persist in hoping beneath the drones at night. It is my story and I will persist in composing, even if my only possessions is a fractured utensil and a piece of torn paper.

'Students ask: "Teacher, are you safe?"'.

An educator, 40, instructor in al-Bureij camp

I have been instructing in Gaza for over ten years. Originally in that urban area, then in another location, and presently in al-Bureij camp in the central Gaza Strip. Prior to hostilities, I used to teach six classes of about 40 students each, almost two hundred forty individuals keen on education.

Teaching them was my vocation and delight in reality, and I still recollect the sparkle in a learner's look when a new idea clicked; the sort of occasion every teacher cherishes.

I always was convinced education should be full of life. My teaching space was a space of amusement, art, and movement. We painted maps, performed past occurrences, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Merriment always permeated the space as curiosity displaced apprehension. Certainly, even in earlier times, children in Gaza were always afraid. My teaching space was a secure location but after the seventh, the situation transformed.

My school became a refuge for families fleeing the bombs. Soon, it was struck and totally demolished. There are very few learning institutions left standing in Gaza now. For this period, nothing has been normal. The war has broken every aspect of our reality: security, dwellings, schools, dreams. Fear and grief are ever-present realities.

Many of my students are now dead – minors who spoke of becoming physicians, creatives, and instructors. They were denied even the entitlement to survival. Those who are still here endure malnutrition, eviction and weariness – and nevertheless, they still maintain the desire for education.

Sometimes, when the online access permits, I receive messages from a handful of them. They write questioning: “How are you, teacher?” We communicate concise phrases, abbreviated teaching, small glimmers of connection amid the turmoil. They ask if circumstances will ever revert to standard. I state to them I am uncertain.

All over Gaza, teachers, helpers and non-profits endeavor education wherever possible: in shelters, destroyed learning spaces, or packed refuges. Education has become an act of defiance, a way to express: “We are still here.” And provided that we continue learning, we will persist.

Numerous of us are also caregivers. I am a mother of {three|several