Kelly Flynn

Kelly Flynn’s mom says she was a born teacher; when she was five she started teaching school to a wide assortment of neighborhood kids. But she discovered a passion for news writing in Mrs. Webster’s Beginning Journalism class her sophomore year. After high school graduation she headed off to Michigan State University to major in journalism. She later decided to combine her two loves and changed her major to English Education with a minor in journalism.

She started teaching in 1981, advised student publications for 15 years, earned the title of Certified Journalism Educator from the Journalism Education Association in 1990, and served as a publication judge for the National Scholastic Press Association from 1989-2002.

In 2002 she left the classroom to pursue her love of journalism once again. For seven years she wrote a weekly newspaper column for The Flint Journal in Flint, Michigan, covering education from an insider’s point of view. The column ran on the opinion page every Sunday. The column also ran in The Jackson Citizen Patriot for three years.

Her first book, Kids, Classrooms, and Capitol Hill: A Peek Inside the Walls of America's Public Schools, is an edgy, funny, poignant look at life in the classroom.