What is the Ken West Staff Listening to?

In today’s society, it is common to see students with their earbuds in, sitting in classes or walking the halls, listening to their favorite music. Other times there are classrooms playing music that is seen as ‘trending’ or appropriate for the academic setting. If our teachers genuinely got to choose the music that played, without the worry of judgment or complaints from students, what would they pick?

Even if not to be played in the classroom, teachers must have a preference on what they listen to and I was curious to find out.  I asked 25 Ken West staff members for their favorite artists, songs, and music decade, and here’s what they said:

The majority of the teachers I surveyed claimed that their favorite music decade was the 1990’s, although this majority is only a solid 28%. Close behind is the 1980’s with 24% of staff claiming the eighties to be the best decade, musically. On the other hand, the least common responses I received were the 2010’s and the 1950’s with only one teacher or 4% of data for each category. 

This data specifically really surprised me because I never thought that the most modern decade could be the least popular among any group. I also found this interesting since oftentimes if there is music playing in a classroom, based on my personal experience, it seems to always be some sort of 2010’s mix. I guess that is just another adaptation that teachers make for things to be classroom-friendly. Then, there was the 20% of surveyed staff who said that the 2000’s were their favorite, 12% who voted for the 1970’s, and 8% who said the 1960’s. Because of the great variance of the data, I was unsuccessful in finding any sort of pattern among the teachers and their preferred music decades. Along a similar line, there was not a single song, band, or artist that more than one teacher coined as their favorite. However, I believe that if I surveyed more teachers, there would’ve been more overlap.

My survey results show that the staff of Ken West has a wide variety of music tastes. The varied results suggest that music preferences are highly individual and subjective, and there is no single “best” decade or single song. Despite the lack of patterns, it is clear that the Kenmore West staff have very different music tastes from the students and even from each other but that’s all in the art of music!