Pros
Overall, decent to lovely teaching environment, depending on what department or age range or classes you’re teaching. Honestly - if we take out the administrative department, this would be 4-5 stars from me! Most teachers are well up to extremely well trained & qualified (senior/master instructors) with a mix of new teachers, as most places are. I find this place specifically has few teachers who are “master instructors” who are irreplaceable and amazing at their job, and part of reason as to why I started here, and creates a nice company culture with LOTS of options to grow as a new-intermediate coach yourself (if that’s who you are). Pay is pretty good depending on department and experience, comparatively to other companies in area, especially with new coaches. Options for free training here if you’re also an athlete or circus performer. Potential networking and connections here are important and a lot-many performers also work part time as coaches here too! LOTS of wonderful performance opportunities as well, if you’re interested or want that available to you. Really cool that adults and youth can be involved in them. And they also are willing and want to hire people who are POC, lgbtq+, disabled, &/or other marginalized identities. Which is refreshing considering many other performing arts companies in bay area are still struggling to do so. Lastly, sometimes you can have 50% or more off workshops and discounts on merchandise, and decent health insurance options for full time (20+ hrs) employees. Overall, 3.5/5 stars! :)
Cons
Starting off as brand new to coaching here would be very overwhelming since there’s little training unless asked for. And working with new coaches who don’t know what they’re doing can be tough. Mainly why it’s not 4 or 5 stars, is the high turn over rate of administrators and administration department is usually messy. Lots of people in that department struggle to get their job done efficiently. And then hire people/coaches who aren’t trained for position they’re in. So generally tricky to have proper communication between different departments, or from parent-student-coach/etc. I wish this was different!! But unfortunately, this department lacking makes the whole school work harder or simply problems don’t get fixed. The pay rate for regular instructor is pretty low for San Francisco/Bay area, especially for new coaches in the aerial department. (Starting rate here is $25-30, whereas other places starting rate is $35-55). But i’ve also seen a lot lower for this type of work so it’s fairly “normal” range unfortunately. Lastly, knowing your schedule can be changed last minute or become very inconvenient. Again, if not getting classes or free training or performing opportunities out of it (which is a HUGE plus here), I will look carefully and consider wisely before working here. If you’re in similar to position to a lot of part time staff here, training a lot and coaching sometimes, this might be a golden fit for you then. :)