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Our Tutors

Madeline Nelson
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Madeline is a University of Central Florida Knight! She's has extensive tutoring experience with students of all ages - even upper level sciences including anatomy and physiology, chemistry, and biology, upper level math including calculus, algebra 1 & 2, trigonometry, and geometry, and even experience with SAT! She's hoping to one day have a career working with students! She firmly believes building a strong academic foundation is paramount to the future success of students and for overall self-confidence. She cites, "By being able to solve problems and learn efficiently, students learn they can do anything they set their minds to!"Her favorite subjects are history, reading, and science! She is adept in working with all learners, but personally, she's a visual-spatial learner! She once told us, she could hear the pythagorean theorem 100 times over, but until she writes it, she probably won't retain it! She's knowledgeable, empathetic, and hard working! She will always put her best foot forward to figure out how to assist our students and meet their needs in any way she can! 

Laurel Rodgers

Laurel is a University of Central Florida graduate student with her Master's degree in Communication Sciences and Disorders. She's worked in numerous facilities where she provided one-on-one instruction to students overcoming both communication and educational hurdles! She enjoys helping students become confident and successful as they tackle concepts and subjects that were once difficult. She's known for her capability to break a concept down into manageable pieces to facilitate better understanding! She loves tutoring english, reading, social studies, and elementary math! Laurel overcame academic obstacles by learning how to study. Recognizing that every student studies and learns differently, Laurel takes the time to help students discover their tools to be successful. In addition, Laurel realized personally at a young age that asking for help could benefit her in the long run - sometimes an outside resource can posit a concept in a new way and that could make all the difference. She went to math tutoring all through middle school and as a result, was able to do very well in high school math and beyond. Finally, she's adopted and fine tuned her growth mindset. She enjoys fostering this same mindset in her students recognizing the differnce it can make in terms of learning new skills and concepts, over a fixed mindset!

Morgan Kerr
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Morgan graduated Fall 2021 from the University of Central Florida, with a Bachelor's Degree in Health Sciences Pre-Clinical and Cum Laude Honors. She is planning on applying to medical school for matriculation in Fall 2023 to become a physician and get involved in health education & research. Her favorite subject to tutor is science, math, and SAT/ACT. She love to tutor because she has a true passion for helping and serving others. I have been tutoring since 2019, with an expertise in high school and college-level students. Morgan loves that each student is unique and enjoys helping them problem-solve. She feels there is truly nothing more rewarding than to watch your passion come to life and be able to help other learners reach their full potential. A fun fact about her is that I was a competitive dancer for 15 years and have traveled across the nation for dance and modeling competitions! 

Jackie Walgreen
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Jackie is a University of Central Florida student studying elementary education and communication sciences. She is passionate about education and helping students overcome educational hurdles in creative ways! She's a natural with students and wants to make educating the next generation her full-time job! She loves ELA and science and attributes her own success as an educator due to the fact that she was tutored frequently growing up. She understands the difference between a great tutor and a mediocre tutor and settles for nothing less than the best! A fun fact about Jackie is that she's actually the rarest kind of learner! She's a visual learner!

Ella Juengst
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Ella is currently an honors student at Rollins College in Winter Park. She’s tutored for over four years (grades K-12), scored in the 99th percentile of her peers on the SAT, and even got 5’s on her Calculus AB/BC exams! Need I say more?! Her greatest joy has always been bringing joy to others’ lives. She proclaims, “Being a tutor makes her feel valued and needed, and by helping students, she’s able to lift a weight off their back, however big or small”. Whenever Ella is around our students, she’s always smiling! She’s always enjoyed tutoring math and SAT the most because she finds that those are the “lesser enjoyed” subjects, and she enjoys the challenge of finding innovative ways to make the subjects easier and even fun, to both understand and study. She’s expressive and artistic; she loves theater and acting! When she was a student, she always ensured she was communicating with her peers and educators to assist her with organizing her workload, time management, and seeking out additional help when needed. Ella values one-on-one instruction, planning, creating lists, etc. and finds herself instilling these similar habits in her students!

Alex Evison

Alex is an undergraduate student from the University of Central Florida. He has tutored for over 4 years now and specializes in upper level math and science tutoring. Alex is a firm believer in investing in the leaders of tomorrow through education as they will be the ones taking care of and leading us! Alex's has been a stellar math student for as long as he can remember; from a very young age, Alex remembers being able to do math quicker and more accurately than his peers. As a result, he frequently finished earlier than his classmates and would allocate his "extra time" to helping them or other students needing assistance. During his freshman year of High School, he took on the role of "TA" for his Algebra 2 class and continued tutoring since. He finds math the easiest subject to explain as it's concrete and based on logic, but Alex loves that math allows for creativity in that he can help a student arrive at the same answer using a variety of methods -- he finds that if one method isn't working for a student, there's generally another that he can think of! When Alex was in school, he was able to be successful by asking questions (to his tutors and teachers); as a result, Alex does a stellar job at creating an environment for our students where they can feel comfortable asking any questions they may have. 

Sergio Cardenas

Sergio, a UCF knight and exceptional team member of ours has been tutoring for over 5 years!! He is a firm believer in tutoring to assist all students -- those struggling and those "passing with flying colors" because he finds merit in students conceptualizing and developing a deep understanding of topics and concepts rather than merely memorizing. He was once a student who would merely memorize testing material and found that on test day he would feel extremely pressured and anxious; when he stopped procrastinating his work and began working on concepts -- little by little each and every day and was more intentional about internalizing the material and truly understanding it so he could apply it to real-world scenarios or other types of problems, this anxiety disappeared and his grades soared. Sergio does an exceptional job at making sure his students aren't simply retaining information for the sake of a test, and instead, that they fully understand the material so they can build upon that knowledge for more advanced concepts. Sergio thrived the most in Science and English -- his teachers in those classes were always highly encouraging (Sergio is also quite the encourager with our students!). Sergio's favorite subject to tutor is Science because he likes relating concepts to stories -- something he feels he can do extremely well when explaining scientific topics! 

Luci Blanco

Luci is a current UCF student, who has over 6 years tutoring experience and was raised by an educator herself! Luci has been passionate about teaching and nurturing others for as long as she can remember -- as a former dancer, student, mentor, and older sister, being a nurturer has became part of her identity! To Luci, there is "nothing more gratifying than seeing a student achieve what they once felt to be impossible". Luci believes that a student's learning journey is boundless and she's merely the facilitator helping them to grow and achieve their goals! Luci enjoys tutoring Language Arts, Social Studies, Spanish, History, and Science, but thrived in all things English and literature. In Middle school, Luci’s work was published for the first time by the American Writers Association. She excelled in all of her high school English courses with honors and was always involved in co-cirriculars such as book clubs or speech and debate. While in High School, Luci had the opportunity to study Composition 1 and 2 as well as Creative Writing via duel enrollment with Florida SouthWestern State College. At that college, she even became president of the college writer’s club! As a headstrong and independent student, Luci often times felt intimidated when she was struggling with concepts growing up — especially if her peers were surpassing her with flying colors. She would let herself struggle through, often times afraid to speak up and ask for help. As she got older, she understood the importance of one-on-one mentorship and education so that she had a place to go and ask her questions to maximize her learning potential. She was shocked with what an hour or two per week did for her academic growth and understanding. As a result, Luci prides herself on being a vessel of knowledge and a means of support for students, especially those who may feel intimidated to speak up in the classroom! 

Taylor Calfee

Taylor is currently a UCF student with 5+ years tutoring experience! She enjoys tutoring because she loves sharing her knowledge and experiences with others and watching them grow. She loves seeing her students report back to her when they've earned a grade they've worked so hard for and knowing she had made an impact on their growth and self-efficacy! She enjoys tutoring english and science the most since they allow for a bit of her creativity to shine, but she thrived in math and science as a student! Taylor is known for helping our students create "systems" that can be replicated and applied to a wide variety of problems -- particularly in math and english. Taylor overcame her academic obstacles as a student by first making plans to approach the problem at hand, determining the most ideal approach, and then attacking the problem itself! As a result -- she's a firm believer in creating processes for students that they can use and apply for all similar problems and for encouraging repetition so that students can gain a high degree of confidence in utilizing her systems for a wide variety of problems! Taylor is our social butterfly! She works well with many of our more shy and reserved students, making each and every student she works with feel comfortable, seen, heard, and valued! 

Gabriella Valdivia

Gabriella is a UCF student with over 3+ years tutoring experience. She finds tutoring to be the most rewarding job! She cites that, "there's no better feeling than helping a student have their AHA moment, where everything just clicks". In school, Gabriella thrived in Biology and English and enjoys tutoring ELA and sciences the most. She finds it fascinating that there's explanations for some of the most complicated processes on our planet and in our bodies and enjoys the challenge of breaking down those more intimidating concepts for students in a way that is easily understood. When Gabriella was in 7th grade, she was diagnosed with ADHD. For years, she struggled with the effects of this disorder -- forgetting homework, struggling to take notes, and missing due dates for assignments. Gabriella was able to work one-on-one with a tutor and develop strategies that allowed her to cope with and manage her ADHD. In many cases, she was able to leverage her ADHD to help her excel beyond her peers. Gabriella was able to graduate high school as an International Baccalaureate diploma recipient, with a 4.33% GPA, and in the top 11% of her class. She was accepted into the Burnette Honors College at UCF in the pursuit of her Biomedical Sciences degree. She's passionate about helping other students, particularly those with diagnoses such as ADHD or ADD to uncover their hidden strengths and truly excel on their academic journey! 

Ashley Werner

Ashley is a UCF student pursuing a degree in Elementary Education. Having scored in the 99th percentile on the ACT, she recognizes that her achievements weren't mere coincidence. As a young elementary student, her teachers would have her assist her classmates and informally tutor them in her classes. This informal tutoring continued through Ashley's high school career and ultimately lead her to pursuing her current degree. She's a third generation educator and honors the benefits of tutoring, acknowledging that not every student learns well in the classroom and most need one-on-one support. She thrived in her core subjects throughout school: Math, ELA, science, and social studies always came easy to her. She was an honors and AP student, but certainly put forth the effort. Whenever she encountered an educational obstacle, she would seek out help from someone who had a firm understanding of the topic. She learned that sometimes she just needed something explained a different way or merely needed someone with the knowledge to ask questions to. Ashley graduated 5th in her class and was accepted into the Burnett Honors college at UCF. Ashley is a unique tutor; she characterizes herself as a verbal learner and a logical/mathematical learner. She enjoys reading, writing, and word games and always had great note-taking skills in school but is equally great with numbers, patterns, grouping, and classification! 

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