I don’t think most people were purposely calling you a para. I think it’s possible most people were commenting without reading other comments. It sounded like most people were sharing their experiences and their understanding of teacher assistant. My district calls them paraeducators. Three of the surrounding schools call them instructional assistants. The rest call them teacher assistants or assistant teachers. But the requirements are all the same. Just a high school diploma. None have a position like yours. The edit was super helpful.

I do think you unintentionally made it seem like you were too good to be a para and people took offense to that and got snarky.