AAS, BA/S or MAT in Early Childhood Education? (kindergarten, degree, costs)

[czpst]

This is a quite a long post because in order to get the most useful responses, I'll need to give you my background.

I have a BS in Family & Consumer Sciences that I earned in 2000. I ended up with that degree out of despair, really. I was massively burned out and needed to leave a school with a degree somewhat related to what I wanted to do; my parents had already spent far too much money after six years and I needed to just finish and move on.

I graduated from HS in 1994, headed to a community college where I earned an AS in 1996 and transferred to a school to major in Biology. The year I transferred, I had medical issues and was forced to return home after spending two semesters racking up courses in upper level science courses. While I was home for about six months, I came to the realization that what I really wanted to do was be a pre-K/preschool teacher - my second career choice.

Once my health was at 100% I chose to go to a different school that had a better education program rather than returning to the school where I had transferred as a Biology major. Everything was peachy at the beginning of my first semester but I slowly started to realize that the course work I was taking and would continue to take had greater emphasis in the K-Grade 3 area (due to teacher licensure) and not so much in the pre-K/preschool area even though the degree was in Early Childhood Education - Preschool through Grade 3. Desperate to stay at this school and not transfer or return home to regroup yet again, I chose to major in Family & Consumer Sciences with a minor in Child Development. Unfortunately, my health once again took a hit. By now, I was also emotionally (and academically, LOL) burned out so I chose to drop the Child Development minor and take as many courses as I could related to Child Dev & pre-K (not many) while completing my FCS major. Like I said at the beginning, I graduated in 2000 with the BS in FCS.

Ffwd 6 years. By then I was married, had had jobs in social work, human resources and early childhood education (our family had moved around a lot during that time) and was currently a preschool teacher when I gave birth to a child that required me to stay home.

Ffwd another 6 years. I am now ready to return to the work force but feel under-qualified as the preschool landscape has changed significantly in this area in that amount of time. Employers are now looking for AAS in Early Childhood Education at the minimum with a preference for a BS/BA in ECE, Birth-Kindergarten (the degree I SHOULD'VE gotten had that been available about 15 years ago! GRRRR!!!), Child Development or a significant amount of ECE/Chid Dev courses. I have none of those and have lost several jobs for the "lack of education in the field" - not experience (about 3 years overall).

I initially thought an AAS in ECE plus my BS and experience could get me a pretty good job in a private school but am unsure if an AAS would actually be a step back. I then considered just sucking it up and transferring credits into a B-K or Child Dev BA/BS but that would take far longer (and be more expensive) than the AAS. Finally, I arrived at "Why not just go to grad school?!" but the problem there is I am yet to find a Master of Arts in Teaching in B-K or Early Childhood Education that is entirely online or offers courses I actually want to take (research methods in ECE? no thanks! maybe grad school is not for me.) not to mention the costs associated with a MAT.

After going back and forth on this for about a month I decided I would just get a post-bac certificate in ECE or Child Dev only to find out getting close to application that the schools I was looking into do not offer financial aid (grad student loans) via the FAFSA because they are not considered full degree programs.

So I'm back to the AAS, BA/S or MAT?

HELP!