🔗 Share this article

'We seek action, not sympathy'.

Juwayriya Adwan, twelve, al-Mawasi

For the past 24 months since I was last inside a learning environment. That long since I heard the morning bell at the institution I attended, occupied my place and participated actively during my favourite class. Sometimes I still clearly recall the auditory and olfactory sensations: chalk dust, sharpener leftovers, joyful sounds in corridors. But my educational institution is gone; it was bombed shortly after the hostilities erupted. My learning materials incinerated, and some of my friends killed.

I was in elementary level on that fateful day: the concluding day I attended classes. That morning, air raid sirens blared through the corridors. Some pupils sobbed, others gripped each other. Our educator attempted reassurance, but even she sounded shaky. I remember hoping for a normal day; lessons, break time, a literary performance. Instead, that day became the last page of my previous existence.

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

Now I live with my mother and father, siblings and female sibling in a crowded shelter in al-Mawasi. The shelter coverings sway with breezes, failing to insulate. We line up for water and food. Power is imaginary and personal space is absent. Aspiration appears brittle.

At night, I look up at the celestial bodies through the gaps of my tent and wonder if my friends see the comparable vista. Some contact me when they are able, stating they long for education and have preserved their former exercise books; like relics of a vanished time. I feel remorseful because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once envisioned entering the education field to help young residents acquire knowledge, even when life was hard. Now I hope for being a reporter – to write, to speak and to demonstrate the world what it represents to be a minor in Gaza. I want to tell our stories of apprehension and need, but also bravery. Because even in this place, amid death and ruins, our voices refuse to be silent.

When there’s some internet, I endeavor to educate myself via the web. Sometimes, I attend a small tent where volunteers instruct us mathematics and language. The sessions are brief – the electricity cuts out or the airstrikes begin again but in these instances, I experience vitality. I recall who I was: the young woman who cherished arithmetic and verse, who was convinced learning could change the world.

The war has taken so much; our homes, learning centers and kin. I grieved for my paternal relative, his partner, and their offspring. I said goodbye to my beloved urban area, that southern city, which is only ruins now. But the hardest loss of all is schooling, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the global audience, I state this: preserve our aspirations. We don’t want pity, we demand measures. The youth merit books, schools and security. Schooling is not optional, it is a fundamental entitlement. The territory is not merely devastation; it is minors who persist in hoping beneath the drones at darkness. It is my account and I will persist in composing, even if the sole items remaining is a broken pencil and a scrap of damaged material.

'Pupils inquire: "Are you alright, educator?"'.

An educator, forty, instructor in al-Bureij camp

I have been teaching in Gaza for more than a decade. Originally in Khan Younis, then in a different town, and currently in the central camp in the heart of the region. Prior to hostilities, I typically educated six classes of about 40 students each, nearly 240 young minds keen on education.

Educating them was my vocation and delight in life, and I still recall the sparkle in a pupil's gaze when a new idea clicked; the sort of occasion every educator lives for.

I always believed instruction should be dynamic. My teaching space was a space of recreation, aesthetics, and activity. We painted maps, performed past occurrences, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Joy always permeated the space as inquisitiveness replaced apprehension. Certainly, even in earlier times, local youth were always scared. My teaching space was a secure location but after that day, all was altered.

My school became a shelter for households fleeing the aerial attacks. Not long later, it was targeted and totally demolished. There are hardly any schools remaining intact in this area now. For this period, all has been unusual. The conflict has shattered every aspect of our existence: security, dwellings, educational centers, dreams. Fear and grief are perpetual experiences.

Numerous of my learners are now dead – children who talked about aspiring to be medical professionals, creatives, and instructors. They were denied even the right to exist. Those who survive experience starvation, displacement and exhaustion – and however, they still hold onto the thirst for knowledge.

At times, when the internet enables, I get in touch with a handful of them. They contact inquiring: “Are you OK, educator?” We share short messages, abbreviated teaching, small glimmers of interaction amid the disorder. They question if circumstances will ever return to usual. I inform them I have no answer.

Throughout this territory, educators, helpers and organizations try to teach in all available spaces: in temporary structures, ruined educational areas, or crowded shelters. Learning has become an gesture of resistance, a way to express: “We are still here.” And so long as we keep acquiring knowledge, we will endure.

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