With our summer quickly coming to a close, new and returning students alike, are anxiously waiting to see how this school year will unfold. This past week, most Excelsior students attended the “mandatory student orientation” with the hope of getting some long-awaited answers regarding what exactly Excelsior has been alluding to these past few months. However, many of you were left with questions. So, whether this is your first or sixth year at Excelsior, this article is going to help you prepare for the year to come.
No More Unit System
In the past, Excelsior has used an unorthodox method of dividing up the school year. Rather than a traditional semester system, our school years were divided into 10 units. This year however, Excelsior has chosen to implement a quarter system instead, which will largely affect work assignments and testing.
If you preferred the old packet system, you may be disappointed to hear that this year Excelsior will still be using Canvas for assignments and testing, but unlike last year, it’s now divided into four 8-week quarters rather than 10 units—the first two quarters will be on canvas in the first semester and the next two will be added in the second semester. In each of these quarters will be weekly assignments and 6 quizzes. (No more daily assignments) The question this leaves us with, that we unfortunately don’t have an answer to currently, is whether or not there’ll still be end of the year projects.
A major impact the quarter system will have on Excelsior students will be how we test. With units gone, so is unit testing, but in its place is quarter testing. At the end of each quarter we’ll get a four-day testing period where we can either test in study hall or workshops that require it through canvas. These tests consist of roughly 20-ish questions, same as unit testing, except what’s different is there’s only 4 test a year, and there are no new questions on this test. All the questions on quarter tests are compiled from the 6 quizzes assigned on canvas throughout the quarter. If you’re unfamiliar with how Excelsior quizzes work rest assured, quizzes on canvas hold no more weight on your work grade than any other assignment and are often gone over in workshops. This means for each quiz you must be familiar with 8 rather than 2 weeks of curriculum, but you have a comprehensive list of potential questions.
· Quarter 1 will be from September 3rd (First day of school) to November 4th
· Quarter 2 will be from November 5th to January 28th
· Quarter 3 will be from January 29th to April 2nd
· Quarter 4 will be from April 3rd to June 12th (Last day of school)
Added Dual Enrollment Option
A major benefit of attending Excelsior has always been the ability to take courses at VVC through concurrent enrollment. This year, in addition to being able to attend classes on the VVC campus, juniors and seniors will have the opportunity to join dual enrollment cohorts taught on the Excelsior Campus by a VVC instructor. These classes will count as three times normal high school credit, making one semester class count as a full year and are weighted to account for difficulty. Most courses offered are also transferable to UC and Cal State schools.
The courses are divided by grades, so of the courses available this fall, the ones open to juniors are Fire 101, ASL 122, GUID 50 (non-transferable), and HLTH 101. The ones open to seniors are Fire 101 Soc 101, and CMST 109. You can refer to the updated workshop schedule below for times and locations.
Omega Replaced by Aeries
Aeries wasn’t set up in time for the student orientation, leaving many of our most pressing questions unanswered. However, to remedy this, I spoke to a student at CIMS and a teacher at Silverado who are familiar with this system.
My first question to the CIMS student was, how do you access Aeries? To which they explained that you can both download an app on your mobile device or access it through their website. Excelsior’s website currently has a link to the Aeries website, but has yet to provide a way for students to log in. A screenshot of the mobile app’s login will be provided below.
Next I spoke to my sources about how the grading on Aeries works. The CIMS student provided me with screenshots of their class grade list and the assignment categories they’re graded on. In their individual class it appears their work, participation, and test scores are all categorized together, but the Silverado teacher clarified that these categories are designed by the teacher of each class. Given Excelsior’s past system, these categories will likely separate our work grades on canvas with our test scores and will be updated by our facilitators. Excelsior has no history of grading students on participation.
Based on information provided by the CIMS student I concluded that attendance on Aries will be very similar to how it was on Omega but was left with one question. On Aeries, for each workshop day teachers will take your attendance and submit it to the website, but as far as I could tell there’s no other school that requires students to sign in through the office the way Excelsior does. So, the question remains whether our swipe-in time will be shown like how it previously was on Omega. Despite the ID machine being broken during orientation, we do know that we’ll still be required to swipe in through the office this year.
Change Can Be a Good Thing
A concern expressed to us by a reader was, “Is the new testing system, aeries, and canvas gonna make things better or worse” This is certainly the question that’s been on all of our minds, and unfortunately, I don’t have an answer for you. Until the year starts, we have no way of truly knowing how the year will go. I can tell you however, that like every other change Excelsior has made in the past, the response will likely be divided. In every change there’s good and bad, so I encourage all of you to keep an open mind, and I hope the information we provide through this newspaper will help ease the growing pains of all these transitions.
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