At Wednesday’s Board of Education meeting, Anya Chabria (8th Grade) was recognized for her outstanding work in last year’s National History Day competition. As part of this competition, Anya

Willets Road’s amazing librarian, Diane Ilkiw, and social studies teacher, Patrick Shanahan, introduced Anya to the attendees. Part of their introduction is as follows:

Anya Chabria was recognized as having the best historical research paper in all of New York State, not only among her age group, but all students in grades 6-8. By being awarded the best paper in NYS, Anya represented the East Williston School District and New York State at the National History Day competition at the University of Maryland in June of 2016.

Encompassing the theme of Exploration, Encounter and Exchange, Anya’s paper examined in great detail the exchange between American and French officials in moving toward the Louisiana Purchase.

Anya should be commended for her willingness to devote her time and energy to scrolling through historical archives and numerous resource documents to develop and construct a concise research paper about an extremely complex topic. Anya devoted hours before and after school, many lunch periods and most of her free time in accessing sources to develop her paper. In fact, in order to translate an original primary source document written in “Olde French” Anya requested the assistance of Mr. Jean-François Henley at Wheatley. He was able to translate the document which added great significance to her thesis. The judges at both the regional and state competitions remarked at the depth of research and variety of sources contained in her paper.

Congratulations to Anya for her success last year, and thanks to the Willets Road faculty for working so well with her!