ANNETTE CALDWELL SIMMONS SCHOOL
OF EDUCATION AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT

Professional Development

The school has a distinguished history of offering special workshops, lectures and seminars that address issues of social and scholarly import. Most are noncredit, but some offer graduate or undergraduate credit.

Preschool Teacher Education

SMU’s Preschool Teacher Education program offers training programs that help schools and child-care centers reshape their language-skills curricula for young children. The training is based on the Language Enrichment Activities Program (LEAP), a unique multisensory, enriched language curriculum developed by SMU’s Learning Therapy program in 1993 in response to a request from the Texas Instruments Foundation (TIF).

The sequential LEAP curriculum includes teacher-training, model teaching by volunteers, take-home ideas for parents and expandable lesson plans that emphasize the areas of receptive and expressive language, phonological awareness, letter recognition, basic concepts, numeracy and fine motor skills. The goal is to prepare children to enter kindergarten functioning close to an emotionally, socially and academically age-appropriate level of development.

Advanced Placement Summer Institute

AP and Pre-AP teachers explore the latest methods and curriculum topics in Advanced Placement education during SMU’s AP Summer Institute. All of the one-week AP Institute classes are taught by award-winning master teachers, and many are supplemented by special lectures delivered by guest speakers from the SMU faculty and public and private secondary institutions.

Music Educators Summer Workshop

Both noncredit or credit workshops are available. Students who elect to earn graduate credit may be able to apply that credit to either SMU’s Master of Music in Music Education program or SMU’s Master of Education (M.Ed.) program.

Contact information

PreSchool Teacher Education
P.O. Box 750284
Dallas TX 75275-0284
214-768-2223
www.smu.edu/PreSchool

Advanced Placement Summer Institute
P.O. Box 750382
Dallas TX 75275-0382
214-768-7245
www.smu.edu/AdvancedPlacement

Music Educators Summer Workshop
P.O. Box 750356
Dallas TX 75725-0356
214-768-3765
www.smu.edu/Meadows/music