The U.S. Department of Education took 25 teachers from more than 1,000 applicants who wanted to assist the department in policy making for one year.

Seven are elementary school teachers. Only one is an art teacher, and she works in Montrose.

Cheri Isgreen, who teaches art at Northside and Cottonwood elementary schools, is one of the 20 classroom fellows for the first year of the Teaching Ambassador Fellowship. The other five Washington Fellows will work with the department in Washington, D.C., while Isgreen will spend the next year traveling between Montrose and the nation’s capital, meeting with Colorado education officials and teaching full time.

“I’ll be busy, but in a really nice way,” Isgreen said. “This is just an incredible opportunity for leadership in education.”

U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings began organizing the program last fall, said Gregg Wiggins, spokesman for the Department of Education. The teachers are expected to give advice on policy matters, based on their classroom experiences, and take on projects to improve education in their home states.

The teachers kicked off their year-long tenure this month in Washington, D.C., where they met with many education officials, including Spellings, and first lady Laura Bush, Wiggins said.

“They are here basically to help us do a better job,” Wiggins said. “The people in the trenches know what’s working and what’s not better than those of us at desks here in the capital.”

Isgreen, who has taught for 23 years with the past 11 years devoted to art, took on two projects to complete during her time as a fellow, she said. One is to help teachers and school administrators to better understand how policy affects classroom practice.

The other is to push for art to be recognized and mandated as part of the core curriculum in Colorado, she said.

Many districts in the state do not have fully funded art programs, she said, nor do they have any requirements for art education, even though the subject is part of the core curriculum in the No Child Left Behind Act.

“Art instruction integrates both hemispheres of the brain,” Isgreen said, “so it is critical to offer art education at the elementary level when the brain is so dynamic in terms of learning.”

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E-mail Cassie Hewlings at Cassie.Hewlings@gjsentinel.com.