Lead Pottery Wheel Instructor

We built the most ridiculous community pottery studio on the planet, and now we need somebody to run the wheels four nights a week.

Not to brag. Okay, fine. To brag a little.

Nearly 10,000 square feet in Draper. 29 wheels. More than 650 commercial glazes. Four kilns, one of them big enough to fire a four foot piece. Around $150,000 worth of tools we have never finished counting. Hundreds of members who keep showing up every week because they want to.

But the studio is not the point. The people are. That has been the idea since day one.

The Job

You are the main wheel throwing instructor for our evening classes. Monday through Thursday, 6:00 PM to 10:30 PM. That is 18 hours a week.

Class runs 6:30 to 10:00. You are paid for the half hour on each end to open up, get set, and lock the door behind you. Nobody should work for free.

What you are actually doing in there:

• Teaching total beginners to center clay for the first time
• Getting the member who has been here a year to finally pull that wall thin
• Demos and one on one coaching all night. We do not lecture at the room
• Noticing the person in the corner who has not asked for help and was never going to
• Opening and closing the studio (with the rest of the team) on your nights

You will not be alone. We staff several instructors every session. You are the lead on the wheels.

The Pay

$23 to $28 an hour.

Plainly: base is $21 to $26 depending on what you actually bring. On top of that is a $2 an hour on-time bonus every pay period. It is built to be paid, not withheld. Show up when you said you would and it is yours.

At one year you move into our raise and team bonus programs.

We looked at what every other pottery job in Utah pays before we picked this number.

What Else You Get

• Free Purple Level membership, which we sell for $200 a month. Six instructed classes, 650 plus glazes, every slab mold through XXL (150 )
• A giant private shelf, 36 by 16 by 14 inches. No divider, no neighbor, all yours
• Clay at our cost, plus six of the seven dipping buckets
• Come in during off hours and make your own work
• Bring a friend or a partner to a class free, once a month
• Monthly bonus drawings up to five hundred bucks
• First pick for more hours when we add class times, and we plan to add them this fall
• Free parking, which sounds boring until you have tried parking downtown

What You Need To Be Good At

This is the real bar, not a wish list.

• You have taught wheel throwing in a studio. Not helped a friend. Taught
• You can center and throw 6-8 pounds consistently, and throw it well
• You can throw and reproduce any standard form. Bowl, mug, plate, vase, lidded jar
• You can work in whatever clay we hand you
• You can narrate what your hands are doing while your hands are doing it. That is a separate skill from throwing well, and in here it is the one that matters most
• When a beginner's pot collapses, something useful comes out of your mouth in about two seconds
• You can keep a room full of wheels moving without getting stuck at one of them for twenty minutes

The physical side, honestly: on your feet the whole shift, hands in cold water and clay for hours, crouching at wheel height over and over, lifting 50 pounds now and then. Your clothes will constantly be going through the wash. But you're a potter. None of this is new news.

The Honest Part

This is where most job postings stop talking. We are not going to.

Four nights a week, four and a half hours a night, you are on the entire time. Talking, encouraging, reading the room, catching the problem before the person gets frustrated. It is more social than almost any job you have had.

We have watched good instructors love this for three months and then quietly run out of gas.

So we need you to actually like beginners. Not tolerate them. Like them. The instructors who run dry in here are the ones performing the enthusiasm instead of having it.

We need you to know how you refill. Some people need an hour of silence, some need a drive, some need a whole day away from humans. Know yours and protect it so that you're always bringing your best to class.

And we need you to tell us when it is getting heavy. Before it gets heavy. We can work with you to ease burnout and socialization fatigue. We cannot do any of that if you go quiet for two months and then hand us a resignation.

Nobody expects you to be delighted about everything all the time. We expect you to be honest with us, and to leave whatever is going on outside at the door for four and a half hours. That is the actual job.

About This Room

Our evening classes are grown ups being grown ups. People bring drinks. The language is not filtered. The laughing gets loud. If that is not your room you will be miserable here, and we would rather you find out now than in November.

One hard rule. Zero tolerance for negativity aimed at the owner, at management, at each other, or at our members. Disagree with me all day long, to my face, and I will listen and might just change my mind. Talk about people behind their backs and you are done. That one is not negotiable.

We are on camera a lot. Around three million people follow this studio across platforms. You do not have to be the star of anything. You do have to be fine existing in the background of a video.

And there is a dog. His name is Mud. He is more popular than I am. I have made my peace with it.

How Hiring Works

• Apply here. Tell me about you and your pottery
• If it looks like a fit, we do a video call
• Then you come shadow a real class. No teaching, just watch the room
• Then you teach a class, and we pay you your full hourly rate for it
• Then we talk

We are hiring right now, and we need you starting within two weeks of the offer.

Come see what we built. Bring an apron if you want it.

There's no place on Earth to do pottery quite like The Clay Hole. Look us up and find out why. We have a lot of fun around here.

Pay: $23.00 - $28.00 per hour

Benefits:

• Employee discount
• Paid training

Application Question(s):

• "Are you available to work Monday through Thursday, 6:00 PM to 10:30 PM?"
• "Are you able to reliably commute to Draper, UT 84020?"
• "How many years of pottery wheel teaching experience do you have?"
• "Can you consistently center and throw 6-8 lbs of clay well?"
• "A student on their fourth class says 'I'm just not good at this.' What do you actually say to them? One or two sentences."
• "Four nights a week you are on for four and a half hours straight. What do you do to reset so that night four is as good as night one?"
• Upload 2 or 3 photos of your best pottery wheel work.
• What's your experience with hand-building? (Not a required skill, we're just curious)

Work Location: In person

Salary : $23 - $28