I just rediscovered two old posts/threads of mine, that explain pretty well, why I want to go into pedagogy now (I didn't know it back then - too busy working on my depression and hating school):

Content warning: Childhood trauma

https://climatejustice.social/@PaulaToThePeople/111490472007434009

https://climatejustice.social/@PaulaToThePeople/111187258270534141

I want to protect children.
I want to provide them a save environment to thrive and talk about their troubles.
In a perfect school system kids would learn mental hygiene and get therapy before they learn integrals and the uncritical history of wars and power abuse. That would prevent so much domestic abuse, because it would be caught early.
And teaching kids emotional and social competence before teaching them applied capitalism will prevent abuse, division, exploitation and hate in the future.

I want to teach children to be happier than me, less abusive than my stepdad, more empathetic than my mom and more protective of future generations than my teachers were.

That's why I'm studying animal assisted pedagogy and will start studying social pedagogy, trauma pedagogy and environmental pedagogy this fall.

#3GoodThings or quite a bit more actually.

Lately things are going quite good for me personally.

1) For my education in animal assisted intervention I'm writing a paper about animal assisted climate communication, combining two of my passions. And I think it will be really good.

2) I want to work in animal assisted education later, but since animal assisted intervention is more of an advanced education I want to get a basic education in education too. My plan is to start both social education and environmental education in the fall. Social education is, I believe, the thing that most people working in animal assisted education have in their curriculum, so it's probably a good thing to have, while environmental education is rather rare, so it might give me an edge for job applications. But mostly I'm just convinced that both will teach me a lot of great skills and knowledge.

3) I've started taking my dog Platon to work (personal assistance for a woman with MS) and since its going well I think I can take him with me every time in the future and that means I can work more (because my mom can't always take Platon) and might finally get out of the monthly red numbers that I'm in for many years now.

4) We're also close to getting the house ready to rent out a few rooms for a little side-money.
That will be another relief financially, but mostly I hope it will mean I have some cool roommates. And maybe some people who can take Platon sometimes.

5) I came out of a depression more than a year ago and kept still taking one of the meds, as its supposed to help the brain get used to how the internal chemistry should be. But it really messed with my memory. Now that spring is coming I'm reducing and eventually getting rid of the medication and I can already tell that my memory is getting a bit better again.

6) I randomly met a friend from school the other day and we started going on walks together regularly and have great talks. That's a kind of friendship I've been missing for a long time.

7) I'm quite proud of what we accomplished at the lately. We finished 2024 almost in the black figures, finally created an account (https://fedi.at/@FediverseFoundation), are regularly posting on our blog (https://fediverse.foundation/en/blog/) and will launch a Pixelfed server tomorrow (https://instapix.org). I'm excited!

8-99) (My memory still isn't great, so I probably forgot a few things)

@3goodthings