I was born in Scotland, and raised in a mostly working-class town in England. Two years ago, even though I flatter myself that I'm a pretty darn good historian, I quit my job as a tenured professor of early American history to work with kids in rural Georgia. This isn't quite as nuts as it sounds: I had been creating kids' "time travel" programs for some time (most notably TimeShop, which was profiled in an Associated Press article three years ago), and I finally decided I would rather work with enthusiastic nine-year-olds than burnt-out nineteen-year-olds.
I'm also the author of *Don't Know Where, Don't Know When*, and * A Different Day, A Different Destiny*, which are the first two books in my Snipesville Chronicles series. They're about three kids from a small town in Georgia who time-travel in American and British history. So, confusingly, the books are the fictional version of Camp Snipesville, my current time-travel camp for kids. Or maybe they're fiction about fiction? Whoa.
Together with artist Lindsey Jenkins and science teacher Brett Walden (both recent alumni of the university at which I used to teach), I've recently started up Imaginative Journeys, a non-profit that creates and runs educational day camps for children in South Georgia, and offers training for college students and recent graduates interested in seeding similar programs elsewhere. We're committed to remaining small, and we have no suits on board... But our dream is to hire an office crone to deal with paperwork.
Another goal: Making all our programs as accessible as possible to interested kids, regardless of their parents' income.
Annette Laing
Statesboro, GA
I was born in Scotland, and raised in a mostly working-class town in England. Two years ago, even though I flatter myself that I'm a pretty darn good historian, I quit my job as a tenured professor of early American history to work with kids in rur... view more
