The students at Kettle Run High School attend a wide range of classes, with some subjects being more or less favored than others. We at KRHS Publications were curious about how much of that favorability comes from the subject itself, and how much comes from the teacher behind it.
In order to explore the question, I set up a public Instagram account and followed a sizable portion of the student body to promote Q&A forms. The cumulative data collected from the responses revealed that while there is likely some teacher influence on favorite subjects, the pattern isn’t clear enough to determine if the idea is completely true or not.
For the purposes of this experiment, we applied a point system to each subject. The system compares how often teachers in a subject area were listed as favorites with how often the subject itself was listed as a favorite. For example, if PE teachers were listed twice as favorites, but the subject of PE itself was only listed once, it would result in a score of -1.
Subjects such as English and the Arts each received a score of zero, as the number of favored teachers coincided with the number of times those subjects were listed as favorites. History and CTE both earned scores of +5, while Science scored a -6 and Math scored a -3. Additionally, PE received a score of +1 and Foreign Language scored a -2.
Data:
| Teachers Favored | # of Times Subject was Listed | Score | |
| Mathematics | 4 | 1 | -3 |
| English | 4 | 4 | 0 |
| Science | 7 | 1 | -6 |
| History | 3 | 8 | +5 |
| CTE | 5 | 10 | +5 |
| PE | 1 | 2 | +1 |
| Foreign Language | 3 | 1 | -2 |
| Fine Arts | 3 | 3 | 0 |
Based on the data, it can be inferred that students prefer History and CTE electives over subjects involving math and science. However, the data also shows an interesting difference between how students feel about a subject and how they feel about the teachers who teach it. History and CTE received positive scores because the subjects themselves were listed as favorites more often than their teachers. Mathematics and Science received negative scores because teachers in those subjects were listed as favorites more often than the subjects themselves.
Mathematics and Science teachers were listed 11 times altogether, while History and CTE teachers were listed 8 times altogether. This may suggest that teachers can have a positive influence even when students do not naturally favor the subject they teach. Science showed the largest difference, with seven teachers favored compared with only one student listing Science as a favorite subject.
Overall, the results do not show that teachers completely determine which subjects students prefer. Instead, the data suggests that teacher influence may be more noticeable in subjects that students are less likely to choose as their favorites.
