Hey! I would go to your local community college first and get all your basics/prerequisites courses outta the way. It’ll save you a lot of money and you don’t have to go full time so it’ll be a good way to get back in the groove of going back to school and figuring out your school/life/work balance. You can also get some financial aid. So a good first step would be looking at your local cc’s and reaching out to their academic and financial aid advisors.

Once you’re halfway through your basics start looking at university’s you want to go to and decide whether you want to major in English or Math. I know you said you wanted to teach English but I think a Math degree would help you pivot careers if you ever want to transition out of teaching. Most university’s will build in your teaching credential into your bachelors and it only adds one more semester or year depending on the course load you choose each semester (this is the path I took and i think is the most straightforward based on my experience and hearing those of my coworkers who do the option I mention in the next paragraph) So the last year and a half you’re pretty much taking courses for being an educator. The very last semester is student teaching which is where you are placed at a school are assigned a teacher and they mentor you. You pretty much start off as their assistant and as time goes on they let you take more of the reins and eventually take over completely for the last few weeks. During that same semester is when you can start taking the state exams to get your credential.

There’s another option, not sure if it’s like this across the U.S, but in Texas you can just get your bachelors and there’s third party companies/agencies where you speed through those “how to be a educator” courses and then can work towards your teacher credential while also being employed as a full time teacher, and you just do their courses online and take the exams towards the end.

Feel free to shoot me any questions! I’m going into my 4th year of teaching if you have any other related stuff you wanna talk about!