Finally... I convinced my wife to try a DL program

My wife has been contemplating changes in career. She earned an MA in Special Education the traditional way from the College of William and Mary. The problem is, she completed the degree before they had changed their curriculum to meet the requirements of No Child Left Behind. Now she's constantly being told she's not qualified to teach anything, which is not exactly true, but it's showing the ignorance of educational administrators. She's tired of being treated like crap, as most special ed teachers often are.

She thought about Speech Language Pathology, and eventually changed her mind on that after Virginia pulled the plug on its cooperative distance learning program due to budget issues. She also considered going into Higher Ed, but there's really no higher ed institutions around us, except for the local community college. After some additional thought, she wanted to go back to her roots of team building and motivational activities, and thus she decided to look into becoming a school guidance counselor.

Once again, the problem arose that there are no schools nearby. The DL programs that do offer guidance programs are ridiculously expense. Then I dropped a hint that APU had a program. She had taken DL courses before, but they were always from a B&M school. APU would be the first school she attended which was purely DL. I am proud to say she filled out the application and is in the process of having her transcripts evaluated for transfer credit! YAY!

I'm so happy because I feel like I've finally talked someone else over to the so-called "dark side" that is distance education. She was a bit of traditionalist, so I REALLY hope the APU program works for her. If the education classes are anything like the political science ones, I'm sure she'll enjoy it.

-Matt

 

That's great! The so called "converting" is going to become much easier as millions upon millions of students will converge to the "dark side" within the next decade. Soon the world will be ours

APU - American Public University or Azusa Pacific University?

Both offer educational degree tracks and both are APU. I'm hoping it's the former. APUS (American Public University System - aka APU) is a well regarded school with regional accreditation, and from my experience, highly satisfied graduates.

 

University programs in speech-language pathology and audiology

UNIVERSITY PROGRAMS IN SPEECH-LANGUAGE PATHOLOGY AND AUDIOLOGY

http://facstaff.uww.edu/bradleys/cdprograms.html

some links maybe broken, but schools still offer the program.... if so, try using the site's search engine.

good luck...

 

It's interesting how things can change in a few weeks. My wife was really excited about APU (that's American Public University, by the way) and so was I. After applying and filling out transfer forms and such, she was ready to go. Then she found out that the internship they require is 40 hours per week for 16 weeks. This is pretty much impossible for any working teacher. I don't see how a school can expect a teacher to be able to meet this requirement for an administration program. All of the tradition B&M programs near us allow you to do acquire hours for an internship throughout the program, by logging hours of working in the office, attending meetings, etc. But not APU. That's a big turn off, and in my opinion, shows the school does not understand its target audience.

Fortunately, the problem solved itself. Old Dominion University, one of the older schools in Virginia, recently launched an online EdS program in administration, so my wife is going to go that route instead. I really enjoyed APU, but they have definitely lost out here.

-Matt