Pros
-Some of the supervisors really care about students’ education -Met some good colleagues/ contacts/ fellow teachers -Good way to become more familiar with special education -Provided with a good device, Microsoft laptop, to use while employed -Pay was reasonable, when the schedule didn’t change and I could get enough hours
Cons
-Schedules often changed at the last minute, both temporarily (for the week or month), as well as permanently (2x my hours were permanently reduced during the school year without warning or severance pay, the second time I was laid off). - when CPS decided they weren’t able to continue the IDEA program in Catholic schools in 2026, Catapult immediately laid everyone off, instead of having our backs and telling CPS how inappropriate this was. They said nothing to us about how they would stand up for the 800 students losing services and we were offered no severance pay. They apologized for the “abrupt end in services,” but apologies don’t pay bills. We were not offered any references to find future work and were told we would lose access to our company accounts within the week -The services provided were mediocre and the support is a crapshoot, all about who you happen to have as your supervisor; most were poor at best. -Teachers often didn't have access to materials listed for lessons written by the Catapult company included in the company’s own lesson plan manuals -No benefits for part time workers -teachers were often placed in positions they were not trained for (I majored in Early Childhood Education and they had me teaching high school math for two years). - repeated instances when company did not support teachers or treat them with respect (a paycheck was delayed bc I was told that my supervisor would enter my hours and she didn’t and my other supervisor wasn’t aware so I missed an entire paycheck and couldn’t pay my bills; Catapult said there “was nothing they could do,” because there was nothing they wanted to do). They don’t give a crap. As a national company, they have endless resources but don’t care to use them to support their employees.