Gaza Herald_ When the ceasefire in Gaza was announced, I felt a rush of emotions I could barely name. There was joy that the bombs had finally stopped, but also dread that they could begin again at any moment. There was a flicker of optimism that we might return to a normal life, and yet deep anxiety that this fragile calm might vanish as quickly as it came.
As an English teacher, my first thought was of my students, the hundreds of children whose dreams and notebooks were buried beneath rubble. Education is not a luxury for Gaza’s children; it is their only path to healing, to rebuilding purpose, and to believing that life can be different. If Gaza is to rise again, restoring education must be our highest priority.
Before the genocide began, I taught English to elementary and middle school pupils at both a public girls’ school and an educational center in Gaza City. In the early weeks of the war, the school was completely destroyed, and the center was badly damaged. My family and I were forced to flee our home, like so many others.
A few months later, determined not to surrender to despair, I began teaching again, this time in a tent. It was a small, local initiative organized by volunteers. There were no desks or chairs; the children, aged six to twelve, sat on the floor, clutching whatever scraps of paper they could find. Despite the harsh conditions, I was driven by one conviction: that the war could destroy buildings, but not the will to learn.
By December 2024, even the simplest materials, pens, books, and notebooks, had vanished from Gaza’s shops. A single notebook, if available, cost between 20 and 30 shekels ($6–$9), far beyond what most families could afford. Children began arriving at class empty-handed, ashamed that they had nothing to write on. Some collected torn pages from the rubble of bombed homes. Others wrote in tiny letters on the backs of old documents their parents had saved. Pens were so rare that several students had to share one between them.
When reading and writing , the very foundations of learning , became almost impossible, we teachers adapted. We turned to oral recitation, storytelling, and songs. I will never forget the sight of my students crouched over scraps of paper, determined to learn, even as hunger and grief shadowed their faces. Their perseverance filled me with both admiration and heartbreak.
I had one precious notebook, a gift from my grandmother. For years, it held my dreams and secrets; during the war, it became my diary of pain, a record of bombings, of families sleeping on the streets, of starvation I had never imagined possible. One day in August, when most of my pupils came to class without any paper, I made a quiet decision. I tore the pages from my notebook, one by one, and handed them to my students.
The notebook was gone in a single day, its pages scattered among small hands. The next morning, my students returned to their scraps of cardboard and salvaged paper. But for that brief day, we wrote freely again, as if the act of writing itself was resistance.
Today, the guns have fallen silent, but my students still have no paper, no pens, no books. Humanitarian aid has begun to trickle in again, food, medicine, and materials for shelter, but education has been forgotten. Gaza’s 600,000 schoolchildren need more than survival; they need tools to rebuild their minds and futures.
Books, pens, and paper are not mere supplies. They are lifelines. They are what allow a generation to overcome the destruction and hold on to their humanity. Learning offers structure in chaos, confidence in fear, and hope amid despair.
The war took away their classrooms, their homes, and their sense of safety, but it did not erase their desire to learn. Gaza’s children deserve more than a ceasefire; they deserve a future. Let us give them the chance to write, to dream, and to believe again.•
