- Amid this, Professor Asma Mustafa's classes are joy and encouragement for Palestinian children. “These children need shelter, food and water, but their heart and their heads also need care, especially under this distress we live in. Children should never stop studying, if they lose their right to education, Palestine will have no future.”
Mustafa, an English teacher in Gaza, has moved three times since Israel’s brutal attack began. The first time, the whole family welcomed the whole family into an empty school, and soon it began to bring together in a room all the children of the families who took refuge each afternoon, to read the stories of the library, speak, play and teach words in English. “It’s a way to confront war and make sense of your routine,” Middle East Eye explains in the middle.
Now, Mustafa has had to move to Rafah, lives in a fabric house and continues to teach children in the area. In the overcrowded Rafah, in unfortunate conditions, the Mustafa Asthma classes are a respiratory center for children, and they are an opportunity to talk about non-aggressive issues, know and share new stories, satisfy curiosity, play with other children...
Teaching in Palestine
“Being a professor in Palestine means working in buildings at risk of collapse, working under Israeli influence, in an emergency situation, suddenly closing classes and returning to uncertainty, and specializing in moral and emotionally helping students, because at the same time we have to be teachers and be parents, brothers or friends for our students,” Mustafa said a couple of years ago. Asma Mustafa has received awards for the struggle for the right to education of children traumatized by violence in Gaza and for their educational work.
"We play, we learn and we explore the world. These children have never traveled, they don't know what it's like outside the walls, they're children who have suffered very violent attacks."
Being a student (and child) in Palestine
After 21 days of Israel’s attack on the Palestinian people, one student thanked the professor who brought him out to play and had not had the chance to play with toys until then. Mustafa realized that the reality of many children in Gaza was that of that girl, and so his initiative was born: teaching English through educational games. He invested in the search and development of educational games and designed 45 game strategies, some learned and others created by himself. He has also taken advantage of the English subject to speak videoconferencing with students from 35 other countries, to know other cultures, to write letters to children from other territories... “We play, learn and explore the world without a passport. These kids have never traveled, they don't know what it's like outside the walls, if not through television and the internet. We work with children who have suffered very violent attacks and who have a very serious economic situation in their homes.”
In that interview with the last attack by Israel he also wanted to send a message to the international: “In Palestine we need to live in peace, no more wars, no more attacks, no more dead or incarcerated relatives, no forced weddings; we have the right to learn, to play, to have fun, to travel and to have good opportunities in life, because only once you live.”