Father of 2, husband, and master storyteller–turning each of his history lessons into a passionate tale. Mr. Cheney is a history teacher, Model UN advisor, and staff fantasy football commissioner here at Waterford High School.
Mr. Cheney graduated from Norwich Free Academy in 2001, which he enjoyed very much. Throughout his entire life, he was an athlete and loved sports, mostly baseball. He was a pitcher and it was his number one sport, only straying away when he did cross country in the fall to stay in shape. Elected vice president, Cheney was involved in his class and part of the unified club.
In his free time, he enjoyed reading and says he read a lot. He also had a good circle of friends–7 to be exact–who he was quite close with and still stays in touch with today. They were all academically advanced and high achievers, whereas Cheney says that he struggled academically. In comparison to his friend’s more challenging classes, Cheney took one AP class–and failed. He says, “I couldn’t keep up with the rigor and I didn’t know how to be a good student.”
Due to his struggles as a student and busy sports schedule, Cheney says, “I wasn’t at that stage of my life where I was enjoying classes. It felt like I was drowning constantly academically, and I couldn’t get interested because it was too much.” In college, where he attended Eastern Connecticut State University, he had more free time to appreciate the classes he took. He preferred college over high school for the freedom associated with it and liked his political science and history classes. Cheney is also an only child and both of his parents worked from home, which he resented for lack of freedom. He thinks, “that might be the reason why college was so great, because I got away from there.”
In high school, he also got a girlfriend, which he says was a big mistake. He describes her as “very possessive” and “the kind of girl who monopolized my time”. When asked what something that made him happy was, Cheney remarks, “Not my girlfriend!”. He looks back on that time of his life and, “cringes that I can’t yell to my younger self about this relationship.”
Cheney had no interest in becoming a teacher, he says that it happened by chance. In college, his roommate said that he was joining the teaching program, and if Cheney joined with him, they could take classes together. Tempted by the idea of having a good friend in class, and getting his parents off of his back for a future plan, he took the opportunity.
Initially, he disliked his education classes, saying that, “They were awful, I was bored out of my mind.” However, while student teaching at Windham High School, he found that he actually loved it and later applied to teach at WHS in 2006.
One piece of advice Cheney previously would have given students is to not procrastinate. However, he now says that he’s “worried about an over-reliance on AI” and has seen students finding a way to not do their work. To this, Cheney advises, “Put in the work, learn it yourself, and maybe use AI on top of what your teacher is telling you. Do the work.”
