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Lebanon: ‘They Trembled, Sob and Step Back from the Glass Panels’

Mohamad El Dirany, Twenty-Four

I was newly appointed educating at a learning center in the valley area when conflict began in the autumn of 2024. Shortly after, an bombing raid tore through my childhood house. At one moment we were eating lunch, the next the structure were crumbling around us and onto my automobile outside. I invested a long time budgeting for that Honda Civic, so when I saw it ruined, I became emotional in tears.

Our household, like many others, were forced to relocate to a more compact living space. The institution quickly transitioned classes to virtual sessions to guarantee the relocated could participate. I was educating a foreign language to grades 5 and 6 with about 35 students in each group. Their faces would freeze on the screen, lagging when the internet was poor.

Being present was mandatory, but many of the students found it hard to focus. After one notably severe airstrike, a mother activated her child’s microphone and started yelling at me: “What is the point? They are not in a frame of mind to learn. They need to rest.” It was impossible I could say to comfort her.

Immediately after the ceasefire was reported, people came back to what was remaining of their houses. My family repaired our walls with makeshift covers, trying to prevent the cold, while I started taking a taxi to school again. Physical classes restarted, but the environment had shifted completely.

Even after the truce, attacks continued to sporadically hit Bekaa, forcing the children to live in a ongoing condition of fear. Unexpected sounds – like a door closing loudly or an object falling the floor – affected the children. They would tremble, cry and step back from the windows, concerned a bomb might drop and shatter the glass. When remote devices flew overhead, they declined to sit near the glass at all.

Drawing houses that had been damaged helped them see that something gone can also be repaired

I think back to one day, after a motorcycle backfired, a boy started weeping. He exclaimed at me, “I cannot bear to die in class. I wish to die next to my parents.” Another child started crying when the word “dad” came up in class – he had mourned his father during an incident.

In those moments, I set the subject aside to address their mental health. We had no funding for specialized courses, so I adapted my educational background and my own reading about mental health.

One task involved the students drawing of the dwellings that had been destroyed. I then asked them to depict them rebuilt, surrounded with plants, colour and people. It allowed them see that something lost can also be repaired.

Sometimes I used straightforward “icebreaker” questions to help them open up. If they were not ready to speak directly, I created stories and asked my students to complete them, so they could express their feelings through another persona. For the most severe cases, we sought help from a counselor.

When the school year ended in July, many of the children were still affected. They kept saying me they could not see a future away from the war, which made them doubt whether learning was worth anything at all. Our next academic session begins in a short time, so I have just been hoping that they were able to relax and recover during the vacation.

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The Republic of Niger: ‘I Greet Students Who Sometimes Journey for Long Periods … on an Hungry’

Ramatoulaye Anoubacar Maliki, Young Adult

Daily I go through the faded blue gates of the academy, where the book room, computer room and laboratory remain shut for insufficient equipment. Since overseas aid stopped previously, my fellow teachers and I contribute money to buy basic supplies. In the dusty courtyard, where pupils gather at morning every morning, the banner flies at the top of a structure.

Since a political takeover in mid-2023, this flag is all that remains of government funding in our academy, where we host nearly a hundred pupils per session. Some sit several to a desk, while the majority sit on the floor.

At this educational center, pupils come from across the Zinder region. Last year, at the start of the academic term, we welcomed more than four hundred children relocated from Nigeria, fleeing violence. Many have stayed quiet since arriving, deeply disturbed after seeing relatives taken and parents harmed in ongoing attacks. Others, especially young men, were drawn in by armed groups, which grows on ignorance.

Last year, according to reports, nearly 800 schools remained closed in Niger. Some concerned institutions are in regions close to neighboring areas, but there are others in certain regions, bordering Mali, where displaced people are fleeing the advance of armed groups in the east of the country.

Regularly, we try to turn our educational environments into safe places. We built makeshift shelters we call “shelters” in the school courtyard to teach the incoming students.

Young women’s attrition numbers are distressing, worsened by aggression, abuse and widespread child marriage.

I want to say they are protected at classes, that they can learn here without worry – especially the young women. They are the future of our country

Last year one of my students, a young girl, young, stopped coming to class to get married. I went to see her relatives. With a ill father and a mother supporting her five children by selling street food, she represents the main financial support for her parents.

I explained to them the importance of school and the significance of their daughter’s schooling for the financial stability of the family.

Other children like her do not even have a home over them. Many get by by begging with tin cans before returning to abandoned houses.

However, every morning I meet children who sometimes walk for extended time, often on an without food, to reach classes. Their determination and resilience give me the will to keep teaching.

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