Teach or Counsel?

Since my Junior year of college, when everyone started asking me "Are you going to get your Masters?", I started thinking about my answer. As far as teaching goes, if you have your Masters, it's typically a $2-3K annual salary increase, so I didn't think it would be worth 3 to 4 years of night classes. Well, the more and more teaching experiences I have, the more and more I'm thinking I'd like to go in a different direction with my career. I love English and I love teaching, but I'm heavily considering school counseling. Because my BA will be in English, I'd have to get my M.Ed in School Counseling. Most programs in VA are 48 credit hours, which will take two to two and a half years depending on how many I take a semester. This is a huge decision, but I really think it's what I want to do. I'm going to keep pondering this one, and I'll talk to David about it in a few weeks when he gets back.

Liberty University (which is only two hours from my hometown) has an on-line program for the M.Ed in School Counseling. I talked to them yesterday evening, and it's sounding pretty good. It's 48 credit hours. All on-line with exception of one class that has a required one week's stay on campus. There's a 300 hour Practicum, which is the only issue because I'll already be teaching. But I'm sure they're used to dealing with already-employed teachers and they have a back-up plan for that. They also cater to military members and spouses. Typically their classes are $476/credit hour and there's a $175 technology fee. For military members, it's $250/credit hour and the tech fee is waived. It's a great way for me to start the degree while I'm in Hawaii with nothing to do, then finish when we ETS back home.

The other options are VCU and VSU, but they don't have on-line programs. So...we'll see where this goes.

I have to look into the VA DOE's counseling requirements, too. I heard from someone that if you teach for 3 years can take a counseling position without the Masters. But for job security reasons, the Masters is probably a better option. We shall see...