I hear ya Guest, and second that! I started teaching about 8 years ago...and taught at 4 studios before I quit to return to college. I started my first job training 8 hours a day FOR FREE!! Then I worked at that studio briefly for about $7 an hour plus 7% commision and was lucky enough to attract the attention of a reputable teacher from another city. So I transferred studios and lived on guarantee for the first 3 months or whenever my earned commisions became higher than the guarantee. I did a lot of scout work there, digging through old files of students who had quit with lessons still on the books...sometimes I got them back in to take lessons they'd purchased years before. I danced my butt off too, training before the studio opened and whenever I had an open lesson hour. I did alright at this studio...making somewhere in the upper 20's my first year. I left that studio for personal reasons and ended up teaching in a nightmare studio with managers who were untrained themselves and lousy with the business. I left there post-haste and ended up in a studio where I made good money again but almost never really got to dance. I'd call it a sales-oriented studio, but that's to put it kindly. So I was making the best money I had ($10 an hour and 12% comm. on credit/payment sales or 18% on cash sales), and due to their aggressive advertising and teleslaes I was all booked up. Problem was that they just didn't care about the dance standard and the sales were high-pressure to the point of being unethical.
So, I guess the guest is right...the average starting income for a teacher is POOR, POOR, POOR. However, if you're young (like I was), and really love the work, it all seems worth it (at least at the time!) He had a good idea about the part time...it would give you some time to size up the type of studio you're working in and maybe get an idea of what the salary range of their senior instructors is.
Best wishes to you and I hope that you've found that dream studio...decent pay, great student base, great dance standard, great instructors.