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Lebanon: ‘They Quivered, Cry and Retreat from the Glass Panels’

A Young Educator, Twenty-Four

I had just started educating at a educational institution in the Bekaa region when war broke out in September 2024. Shortly after, an military attack tore through my family home. One minute we were eating lunch, the next the structure were falling down around us and onto my vehicle outside. It took me several years setting aside money for that personal vehicle, so when I saw it destroyed, I was overwhelmed in tears.

My family, as with numerous people, were forced to relocate to a smaller apartment. The school quickly shifted classes to digital platforms to guarantee the evacuated could participate. I was educating French to students aged 10-12 with about 35 students in each class. Their faces would freeze on the monitor, disconnecting when the connection was poor.

Participation was compulsory, but many of the students found it hard to pay attention. After one notably severe attack, a guardian activated her child’s microphone and started yelling at me: “How can you continue? They’re unable to be in a state to learn. They require to rest.” There was nothing I could say to reassure her.

As soon as the halt in hostilities was reported, people went back to what was still standing of their houses. My family repaired our building with makeshift covers, trying to keep out the cold, while I started traveling to school again. Physical classes continued, but the mood had shifted completely.

Following the truce, attacks continued to sporadically hit the region, forcing the students to live in a ongoing condition of fear. Unexpected sounds – like a abrupt noise or an item dropping the floor – triggered the children. They would shake, cry and step back from the windows, afraid a bomb might drop and break the glass. When remote devices flew overhead, they refused to sit near the windows at all.

Sketching houses that had been destroyed supported them see that something gone can also be repaired

I recall one day, after a vehicle made a loud noise, a child started sobbing. He screamed at me, “I refuse to die in class. I wish to die next to my loved ones.” Another child became emotional when the word “dad” came up in class – he had lost his father during an airstrike.

In those moments, I put aside academics aside to focus on their mental health. We had no resources for professional development, so I applied my professional knowledge and my own reading about psychology.

One activity involved the students creating images of the dwellings that had been affected. I then asked them to draw them restored, surrounded with flowers, vibrance and community. It allowed them see that something gone can also be fixed.

On occasion I used basic “conversation starter” questions to help them open up. If they were unable to speak directly, I created narratives and asked my students to complete them, so they could express their emotions through another figure. For the most severe cases, we sought help from a mental health professional.

When the academic term finished in July, many of the children were still traumatised. They kept expressing to me they could not see a life away from the war, which made them doubt whether education was important anything at all. Our upcoming term begins in a near future, so I have just been hoping that they were able to recover and recover during the time off.

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A West African Nation: ‘I Meet Students Who Often Walk for Long Periods … on an Empty Stomach’

A Teacher, Young Adult

Daily I step through the faded blue gates of the institution, where the library, technology lab and experimental area remain closed for lack of equipment. Since external support stopped a while back, my colleagues and I combine money to buy essential materials. In the earth courtyard, where pupils gather at morning every morning, the banner flies at the top of a pole.

Following a government overthrow in recent years, this flag is all that remains of government funding in our school, where we host nearly a many pupils per session. Some sit several to a workspace, while the majority sit on the bare surface.

At CEG4, pupils come from across the surrounding communities. Last year, at the start of the academic term, we welcomed more than 400 children displaced from Nigeria, fleeing conflict. Many have stayed reserved since arriving, affected after seeing relatives abducted and parents killed in ongoing attacks. Others, especially young men, were drawn in by extremists, which prospers on lack of education.

Last year, according to reports, nearly eight hundred schools remained shut in Niger. Some impacted institutions are in regions close to neighboring areas, but there are others in Tillabéri and Tahoua, bordering Mali, where evacuees are fleeing the spread of armed groups in the east of the country.

Every day, we try to turn our learning spaces into secure zones. We built temporary structures we call “hangars” in the school courtyard to teach the additional learners.

Young women’s absence levels are distressing, worsened by hostility, assault and widespread underage unions.

I hope to convey they are safe at school, that they can educate themselves here without worry – especially the young women. They are the future of our society

Last year one of my learners, Barkatou, young, stopped coming to class to get married. I went to see her relatives. With a ill father and a mother caring for her family by selling basic goods, Barkatou represents the main source of income for her parents.

I clarified to them the importance of school and the necessity of their daughter’s schooling for the economic future of the family.

Other children like her do not even have a shelter over them. Many manage by begging with containers before returning to abandoned houses.

Despite this, every morning I meet children who sometimes walk for extended time, often on an hungry, to reach education. Their bravery and perseverance give me the motivation to keep instructing.

It was also what gave me the resolve to convince her parents and her husband so that this year, after a year out of school, she returned to class. I saw her joy when she came back, {proud|ple