Valentine’s Day is a difficult day for everyone, especially teachers. Everyone knows that it is near-impossible for teachers to date outside the profession. My girlfriend is a teacher and I feel bad for her every single day. She has to mark books, while I binge watch every episode of “Fresh Prince of Bel Air” on Netflix. She has to plan lessons for the week, while I drink alone in front of my laptop. She has to worry about Ofsted, while I worry about the detrimental effect that a slovenly lifestyle is having on my physical and emotional health.

I messaged her to make sure it was okay that I joked about her in this blogpost. Her response was blunt:

Alex, stop messaging me about pointless crap.

I am literally crafting the minds of future generations. You are writing stupid blog posts.

You are the worst. I do not love you. We are done.

Anyway, my point is, teachers might be best off dating other teachers. To help you out, here’s a list of the best and worst teachers to date.

The best

Geography teachers

They know loads about how oxbow lakes are formed.

Language teachers

Before I went on holiday last year, I downloaded Duolingo and convinced myself that I was going to teach myself French in the space of two months. In reality, I went on the app roughly four times, ignored the constant reminder notifications, and then just went to Paris and sheepishly spoke English.

If you’re dating someone who can actually speak other languages, you won’t have to look as ignorant as I do on holiday.

Maths teachers

Someone who decides to teach maths is an impressive type of person. They dedicate their life to algebra. They willfully spend their evenings marking badly-drawn scatter graphs and box plots. They’re so in love with equations that they’ve decided to talk about them all day to a room full of teenagers. I can’t even grasp how anyone could have that amount of love for anything, never-mind maths.

So if you also love maths, that's great. You can chat about that. But what if you don't? What if, like me, you think maths is boring and gave up on it as soon as it got harder than just adding up numbers?

Well it's fine, just come at it from another angle. This person currently has such low expectations that they are willing to be in love with something as drab as maths. All you have to do to impress them and win their heart is to be more interesting than fractions. Even I am occasionally slightly more interesting than maths, and I am horrendously dull.

Primary school teachers

You get to hear about funny things kids said. And, chances are, they have access to Lego.

PE teachers

When I was at school, our PE teacher and our food tech teacher got married. I liked to imagine their home-life was perfect. Shelves stacked high with books by Joe Wicks and Deliciously Ella (I just had to google “healthy people”). A home gym. No sugary treats. In reality, they were probably just a normal couple who spent their evenings complaining about the kids who constantly forgot their food tech stuff and PE kit.

Design technology teachers (except graphics teachers)

Dead good at making stuff.

The worst

Chemistry teachers

If the TV series Breaking Bad taught us anything, it’s that all chemistry teachers eventually quit their jobs and become meth dealers. Or, at the very least, have the potential to do so. Dating a drug dealer would probably be quite a lot of fuss, especially if you’re still a teacher. For one thing, your working hours wouldn’t really match up, so you’d never get the chance to see La La Land at the cinema together. And imagine trying to get your marking done with all that drug dealing going on. Best off giving it a miss.

Music teachers

Music teachers are our nation’s true heroes. I can’t comprehend how frustrating it must be to spend all day listening to a room full of children attempt to play musical instruments. Imagine how constantly loud that room must be. Imagine how many discordant sounds must occur in that room. Imagine spending five hours surrounded by that angry arrangement of noises each and every day.

I can only guess that music teachers go home and just sit in complete silence, unwilling to listen to another utterance of sound. Just sat, trying to think back to a time when they enjoyed music. Lying down, trying to sleep, trying to remember what life was like before the tyrannical wall of noise took over their life.

They probably therefore have no time for dating.

Drama teachers

If attending amateur performances of Shakespeare is your thing, then you’ll be alright. If not, soz pal.