Teaching at Tanzquotient

Join Us

We are students who are enthusiastic about dancing and want to pass on our passion to others. Thus, most of our courses are taught by students like you.

If you already know how to dance and want to share your knowledge and passion, join our teacher's team! You would typically be teaching one evening per week during the semester and will of course earn some money (30 CHF per hour).

If you are interested, send an email to tanzen@tanzquotient.org and introduce yourself.

Information for Teachers

If you are teaching at Tanzquotient or are about to start, please read through the following sections.

Getting Started

You can find some general information for getting started at Tanzquotient here: Getting Started

Please read through it. Not all sections are relevant for you as teachers, but it tells you some important information, like who to ask, how to login to our Drive Wiki and more.

Contact Persons

For Ballroom and Salsa, there is a teachers chat. You will get most information there and can ask anything teaching related. The admins of this chat are usually the Ballroom/Salsa admin people (see below). They coordinate most of the teaching related stuff and should be your first point of contact.

Otherwise, you can always contact the dance admin of Tanzquotient at tanzen@tanzquotient.org (currently Chantal Huber).

Ballroom Admin

Currently the Ballroom admin team constists of Daniel Sparber, Irina Kempf, Tim Gehrunger.

If you would like to become part of the Ballroom admin team and are currently teaching at Tanzquotient and have experience in dancing as well as teaching, feel free to reach out to either of them. 

Salsa Admin

Currently the Salsa admin team consists of Robin Renggli and Lena Meyer.

If you would like to become a part of the Salsa Admin team, please don't hesitate and feel free to reach out to either of them.

General information on our teaching style

Generally, adapt your teaching to the group. Some groups are faster than others. Also, the learning speed within a group will be inhomogeneous. We encourage you to use gender-neutral language such as lead and follow instead of man and lady. Respect everyone's personal space and always ask permission before touching a student to show a move.

Usually, dancing with different partners improves the learning process. Ask your students to change partners. It is an important aspect of social dancing. Moreover, dance with your students now and then as it allows finding problems more easily and individually. If you find a problem occurring for a majority, treat it as a general topic. However, never name or blame people for mistakes. If your group is interested in details, you may provide them if suitable for the group’s level. Feel free to refuse if it is too far out of scope.

Please record what you taught. If you are e.g. on holiday and need a substitutional teacher or would like to hand over your group, the other teacher needs some information about the group’s history.

Contracts & Payment

Employed

As a teacher of Tanzquotient you are by default getting money for each hour you teach. This comes with the following points:

  • You are employed by VSETH (the student association of ETH Zürich).
  • You get a contract. If you did not get a contract yet, please contact the dance admin team (tanzen@tanzquotient.org) as soon as possible.
  • The default wage you get is 30 CHF / 60 minutes.
  • Make sure your profile at https://tanzquotient.org is up to date. Especially your address and bank information must be up to date.

Volunteering

If you want, you can also volunteer for teaching at Tanzquotient. I this case, the points above do not apply to you.

Continuous Education

  • As Tanzquotient teacher, you can attend as many Tanzquotient offers that help you improve the skills of the style you are teaching for free.
  • For Ballroom, we strongly encourage you to participate in the Ballroom Trainings.
  • Tanzquotient is also offering dedicated continuous education sessions: check with your contact person (see above) to find out more!

Budget for External Education/Training

We have a budget for teachers who want to take courses or workshops. You can apply to get a contribution to your expenses for anything that will benefit you in your role as a teacher at Tanzquotient. Just send an email to finanzen@tanzquotient.org. The board of Tanzquotient will collectively decide on your requests twice a year: on April 1st, and October 1st. Make sure to send your request on time!

Course Reviews

  • After each course, we are sending out evaluation forms.
  • You can see the anonymized responses for your courses here: https://tanzquotient.org/survey/teacher/
  • Board members can also see the responses and go through the reviews every once in a while.
  • Students may leave a public review that shows up on the course detail page for a related course.
  • If there are any inappropriate comments, you can exclude the answer from the public review.

Resources for Teachers

Tanzquotient Google Drive

Music

Stefan Rickli has created many playlists for different dances - even sorted by BPM!

Dancecentral.info

An extensive list of Ballroom figures & their technique is available on www.dancecentral.info. For Ballroom dances there are sometimes images showing the steps, which can be useful.

Course Concept for Ballroom Courses

Ballroom 1 - 6

Ball Crash Courses