I don't know anything about private school where you are, but I know that the whole "go straight for the masters" thing you mentioned isn't the norm around here. Private schools vary greatly in their quality, so I would imagine that your experience as a teacher there would vary greatly as well. Why are you more interested in private than public?
For general teaching topics,
teachers.net has an OK forum. I used it a lot when I was moving from NY to NJ and wanted to know what teaching in NJ was like, but that was several years ago, so I can't vouch for it now.
What do you want to teach? That will help you find forums as well. I'm an English teacher, so I really get a lot of good information from NCTE, which is my professional organization. I'm also a member of the
English Companion Ning, which is a phenomenal online community of English teachers.
What sort of teaching background are you getting from your BA? If you're not doing a teacher preparation program as part of your BA, to get state certification, you'll need to do extra steps to teach. You could do a masters program that will be mostly ed credits and will do your student teaching. You could also do an alternative certification program like Teach for America or the NYC Teaching Fellows (which is how I became a teacher). In the Teaching Fellows, I did an intensive summer of pre-service and then went into the classroom. I did my MSEd concurrently to my two years of service in an inner-city classroom. It was a tremendous, life-changing experience, by the way. Anyway, your options will depend on the state you live in. If you're comfortable posting your location, there may be people here who are more familiar with your region.
