MAXimize Tutor
MAXimize Tutor
Professional Tutoring
Our professional educator tutors meet with students in person, and they utilize our amazing team of college student tutors in between sessions for additional support to students if necessary. Scroll down to read about our professional educator tutors. Please make note that we currently have two levels of professional tutors based on their level of experience.
EliteMAX Professional Tutors: Our EliteMAX Professional Educator Tutors have many years of teaching experiences as well as leadership roles and/or achievements. These tutors have taught in various and diverse settings and can offer the highest level of support to your child based on their deep level of experience.
MAXimize Professional Tutors: Our MAXimize Professional Educator Tutors are dedicated teachers that truly go above and beyond for their students. Additionally, they have been a part of the MAXimize team as college student tutors for several years, and therefore have a great deal of tutoring experience as well as significant MAXimize training.
Amanda Martinsen
Founder & CEO of MAXimize Tutor, Educator
EliteMAX Tutor
Education and Awards:
**University of Iowa, BBA (2007)
**DePaul University, M.Ed (2012)
**2016 IEA Reg Weaver Human and Civil Rights Award
**Award of Excellence in the 2016 Distinguished Service Awards program sponsored by INSPRA
**NSSED Outstanding work in Special Education, 2018.
Amanda Martinsen is a former elementary and middle school teacher. She taught a 4th and 5th grade loop for five years in Glenview where she developed an advanced math project based curriculum as well as created The Nora Project, a year long literacy project that teaches empathy to students by fostering friendships between students and their peers with disabilities. Amanda won several awards for her work on the Nora Project, and it went on to become a national nonprofit organization. After five years in Glenview, Amanda broadened her teaching experience transitioning into a seventh and eighth grade math position in Northfield where she taught Pre-Algebra and Algebra courses until she had to take time off from the classroom after her twin boys, Max and Lincoln, were born four months early. Max passed away in the hospital, while Lincoln thankfully made it home safe and sound after a very hard and long fight. Inspired by Lincoln's strength, Amanda launched MAXimize Tutor (named for her late son, Max), with a mission to make the world a better place, one child at a time by empowering students to be their best.
Meet the Professional Educator Tutors
Danielle Fluegge
GBN English Teacher
EliteMAX Tutor
Danielle Fluegge is an English teacher and Coordinator of Student Activities at Glenbrook North High School. For fifteen years, Danielle has taught across the 9th, 10th, and 12th grade levels and has run support classes in developing reading skills and honing executive functioning. In her English classroom, she teaches a curriculum that asks students to study a variety of literary works and genres, confronting questions about how they learn, while focusing on critical thinking, reading, writing, and speaking. She is keen to assist students with executive functioning, and has done so in her Guided Studies courses. In that course, she supports students with their academics by providing tutoring services in reading, writing, and public speaking, and helping develop consistent self management skills in the classroom setting, while monitoring student progress in all their classes. Danielle will be supporting students in reading, writing, and public speaking from 1st grade through 12th grade including all AP and honors English courses.
Hannah Kang
GBN English Teacher
EliteMAX Tutor
Hannah Kang is an English teacher and the Reading Coordinator at Glenbrook North High School. In her 21 years at GBN, she has taught 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th grade English classes at all levels from TEAM to Honors. Hannah has worked extensively with juniors to help them to think critically about their readings and to assist them during all stages of research paper writing. Due to her many years of co-teaching with a history teacher, Hannah has developed reading and writing strategies for students in both English and Social Studies. In her current American Experience curriculum, she asks students to understand, apply, analyze, create, and evaluate important concepts in American history and literature. As a reading specialist, Hannah has worked with younger, emerging readers, but her focus is building reading comprehension and inference skills in older readers. Hannah has also tutored students in preparing for the ACT and SAT tests. Hannah will be supporting students in reading, writing, and researching from 1st grade through 12th grade including all AP and honors English and Social Studies classes.
Jen Laudadio
GBN English Teacher
EliteMAX Tutor
Jen Laudadio is an English teacher and the ESL Coordinator at Glenbrook North High School. Jen has been teaching for 26 years and has taught 9th-12th graders in her time as an educator. She also worked as a special program coordinator (reading support, ESL and summer programming) for several years. In Jen’s English classes, students are asked to think critically, work on writing revision skills, and build vocabulary and reading comprehension competency. They are asked to find ways that they learn best and work to improve and enhance those skills as they move forward in their educational careers. Jen also challenges reluctant readers to find texts they enjoy in hopes of fostering a love of reading in each student. When students need assistance with executive functioning skills, Jen teaches them the skills necessary to become independent, self-assured learners. As an ESL teacher, Jen helps her students find confidence and become better English listeners, readers, writers and speakers.
Maria Hartas
3rd Grade Teacher
MAXimize Professional Tutor
Maria recently graduated from Loyola University in the spring of 2022. She received a B.S in Elementary Education while minoring in Special Education. She completed her student teaching in the Northwest suburbs of Chicago, in a 2nd-grade classroom. For her first year of teaching, she taught 6th-grade math in the suburb of Schiller Park. As math is her favorite subject to learn and teach, she loved her role and was excited to work with students every day. This school year Maria is excited to start a new journey in the same District as a 3rd grade teacher! With her student teaching experience as well as her experience as college tutor with MAXimize Tutor, she cannot wait to thrive in her new 3rd grade classroom! Maria can work with students from kindergarten through 6th grade in all subject areas and is excited to work with new students in reaching their goals for this school year!
Madison Krug
Elementary School Teacher
MAXimize Professional Tutor
Madison just recently completed her student teaching at East Prairie School District 73, where she was promptly offered an elementary teaching position to work with students across grades k through 5. In Madison’s role, she will create both enrichment and remedial content for students in math and reading to help fill gaps and to help raise the bar for students requiring more challenging content. Madison recently earned her Masters of Education with a concentration in Elementary Education and an ESL+Bilingual endorsement at Loyola University Chicago. Prior to attending LUC, Madison graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2018 with a BA in Business Marketing and Spanish certificate. For the last four years she has worked as an Account Manager at an advertising agency. Madison has always been very passionate about children and education, so in the Spring of 2021 she began her career change journey. She is excited to work with MAXimize students in grades k through 5 across all subject areas.
Cancellation Policy
Professional & Custom Tutoring: If you cancel your session less than 48 hours before your session, you will be charged a $40 planning fee. If you cancel your session less than 24 hours before your session, you will be billed for the full session. Frequent cancellations can result in loss of your tutoring slot to be filled by someone from the waitlist.
On Demand Virtual Tutoring: If you cancel an on demand virtual tutoring session less than 24 hours ahead of time, you will be billed for a 30 minute session.
Thank you for understanding! Tutors spend time preparing for tutoring sessions ahead of time, arranging childcare around tutoring sessions, and tutoring slots cannot always be filled at the last minute by a different student. Please keep this in mind when scheduling.