LaGRANGE — Earlier this month, the Troup Community Foundation gifted one teacher a grant to attend Harvard this summer. That teacher, Troup High’s Michelle Ashmore, will spend one week in the Project Zero Classroom on the historic campus.

Ashmore said she filled out the application for the Project Zero Classroom program the very night she found out about it.

“I said yes to the opportunity before anything else,” she said. “As I started looking through the project it just grabbed me because I pride myself in being the type of teacher who does things differently to elevate the level of what I expect out of my students.”

During the weeklong stay at Harvard, Ashmore will examine the shifting terrain of education to be responsive to complex social developments and to create learning experiences that are engaging and exciting for learners according to the professional education program overview.

Ashmore, an advanced placement government and economics instructor, believes in hands-on learning.

“In my research, Project Zero epitomizes the belief that I have of showing students what they normally do in a traditional classroom and flips it upside down,” she said.

The Troup Community Foundation partnered with another foundation to offer this opportunity to a Troup County educator.

“We’ve supported the schools two times before,” said Chris Joseph, C.P.A. “We worked with the Chattahoochee Valley Community Foundation who sold us on the idea. They helped us make this happen and we want to see it grow in the future.”

Currently, Ashmore is the 2015-2016 Troup County Teacher of the Year. On Tuesday, she was named a State Teacher of the Year finalist. She coaches competition cheerleading and looks forward to running another half-marathon.