From an undergrad university student at KU

I have finally submitted all my writing projects for the semester. I want to thank you again for everything this semester. You were an amazing professor and taught us well, and you deserve to know that. Thank you for fully understanding my situation this semester and not giving up on me; that really means a lot. As well, you completely changed my idea of how professors are as people, like you said, most professors truly care about their students, with only a select few being, in your words, “assholes.” Thank you for not being an “asshole,” haha. Everything truly means the world to me. I wanted to stay after class yesterday for a minute and thank you in person, but I was in a rush to get to work.

Thank you so much!

From a private tutoring client whose daughter was a student of several years

David has a great teaching style. I enrolled my daughter in his class, and I could see how much she enjoyed his class. I saw how her passion for writing developed and became stronger thanks to his skillful guidance. I could see how his teaching helped her find her dream. It is thanks to Mr. Mccalmon that my daughter has found her personal writing style, and has become more comfortable with sharing her work with others. Also, it was a huge help in how Mr. Mccalmon understood right away the best way to work with my child. He really made sure that he was approachable. When we had homework, he made sure to go over it with us so we could learn from our mistakes and not repeat them again. Also, he understood that not everybody will need the same treatment, adapting his style in order to make sure we got what we needed. He was also a great facilitator, really giving us the chance to explore and find our own opinions. I would also like to thank him for all of the support and patience you have constantly demonstrated. Even though I’m sure your students must have tested your patience numerous times, you coped and throughout it all continued to help her learn. I could tell how you truly cared about your students and were trying to help them become intelligent young people, and I believe you succeeded in your goal. I constantly noticed how he easily controlled the class and was extremely understanding. He always made sure that his students had a comfortable atmosphere in which they could share any of our thoughts, and he didn’t limit their thoughts by impressing his opinion on them or anything. In fact, he always made sure that they finished their comments before he replied to them. Even when any comments were blatantly wrong, he didn’t correct them immediately; he tried to understand their reasoning, and then helped guide them onto the right path of analytical thinking. Overall, David is a wonderful teacher who truly understands how to best unlock every child’s potential correctly.

— Cheryl Lieu, Pleasanton, CA.

From the mother of two of my students at my tutoring company

David is a calm, experienced and a very thoughtful tutor. He is very patient with my son and very thoughtful and purposeful with planning the right lesson for my son. Not only my son improve so much with his English skill, the most important thing is that he told me the other day, “I love writing and reading now.” I know I have to give this credit to David.

“After talking to my daughter and learning about her thoughts, David made some changes on the lesson and homework plan.  The changes made a significant difference to my daughter’s learning.  She seems more motivated and sees the purpose of the learning plan. Her mentor and Science teacher at school send me an email to affirm her improvement and progress.  “I just wanted to let you know that your daughter made solid improvements on her written explanations in our most recent science project! Her writing was considerably more articulate and her word choice was more deliberate than her previous explanations.”

— Jeannie Lee, Sunnyvale, CA