I have never heard of anyone needing to give a defense of a Masters thesis. What feedback did you get about why you failed your defense? PhD defenses are more... For show, these days. I've never heard of anyone being allowed to give their defense (in other words, being signed off on by their supervisors) and then failing their defense.

Do you mean you got instructed to 'revise and resubmit' it? Just trying to understand your situation here... I would think that you would need to contact your supervisors if you wanted to do further work... Though... If they thought you were ready to defend and you failed your defense I really wouldn't have any faith in them at all anymore...

I hear you about your passion being to teach someplace where you can focus on your teaching and not worry about "publish or perish". I don't know about community colleges... But those positions don't really exist in Universities anymore. They were never supposed to exist. It is more that people who got hired in the hope that they would go on to contribute to their field (by publishing) ended up... Not doing that once they were offered tenured jobs. It is a generation thing... Those old people who are about to retire... Their jobs aren't being replaced. Not in their present form. Tenure is next to impossible to get... Until you have *already* done a lifetimes worth of publications.

With respect to Universities... There is a hierarchy... And places are always keen to move up the rankings (in order to attract more research funding, attract smarter students, etc). They tend to hire from 1 tier up (at least). Sometimes... No more than 1 tier (if they are concerned about people wanting to move on quickly from that location)... But generally speaking... If you want to return to your small hometown undergraduate institution... The way to do that is to do well enough to get accepted to do a PhD someplace a bit grander... And hope your home institution will have you back if you completed your PhD out okay... Tenure track... Expectation of a book and several articles before you come up for tenure in 5 years...

Your field might be radically different...

Have you thought about High School teaching? No expectation of publishing, there. Focus is on teaching.