This Side of Perfect

Do you ever just mentally wake up one day and realize enough is enough?

I've slowly come to this point in my life.

Things have been downright sucky these past two years. I could go on and on about how sucky. I could give explicit detail, down to the nitty gritty suckiness of it all. But I won't.

I won't because it doesn't do you (or me) a bit of good to dwell on how sucky things are and how much we can't control them. Sometimes, it just is. I could easily wax philosophic about the meaning of it all. Why we struggle the way we struggle? Why some people seem to struggle more than others? And most importantly, why some people seem to come out of their struggles stronger, while others come out strangled (figuratively, speaking)?

I could address this now, but I'm not going to. I don't feel qualified right now to even begin to theorize these questions. Because when it comes right down to it, I'm currently in the middle of my struggle and I cannot make sense …

This is the third part to a 3-part series chronicling my take on the differences between a job as a paraprofessional and a job as a teacher. (View Part 1 here and Part 2 here.)

Let me preface this list by saying that I believe that paras and teachers have the potential to equally rock the education world. They can love and nurture students in a way that only an educator can. They can help students become great.

That said - there are some definite differences between paraprofessionals and teachers. This list is not to say one is better than the other. Rather this is meant as a tongue-in-cheek comparison of how I perceive the differences of a paraprofessional's job and a teacher's job. (And any teacher who has worked as a para or vice versa should be able to relate to my list.)

Paraprofessionals Vs Teachers Calendar Reduction Days – “Yay! I get another day off. Yeah, it kind of stinks that it’s a Calendar Reduction Day, but hey – a day off is a day off!”
Calendar Reduction Days …