Our full service school courses meet live and online once per week for 90 minutes although math classes meet twice per week for 60 minutes per session. Students then work asynchronously between class sessions using our learning management system to submit work, projects, quizzes, or tests. Teachers handle providing instruction, making assignments, and evaluating work. A final grade verification is provided at the end of the course term. All classes are recorded in case a student needs to miss class.
We offer classes in a wide array of subject areas ranging from art to science, language arts to math, and technology to history. We even offer foreign languages. For those looking for unique courses, we have several including thematic literature courses, film, art, and psychology. Our course catalog is a great place to explore options.
Excelsior Classes is committed to providing an encouraging learning environment for all students while also meeting educational goals and providing educational experiences typical for traditional grade levels.
Parents are ultimately responsible for placement in courses. Parents should review the prerequisites and materials, and they should consult with the teacher if there are any questions about student readiness. Some courses, such as math or foreign languages, do have placement exams to help provide further guidance. These exams are located on the individual course pages. Teachers are always available to make recommendations too. We want you to make a great decision for your student.
We recognize that there is much freedom and variety in a homeschool setting. We do not advise using grade level or age as the only metric for selecting a course; academic readiness and maturity for material should be considered in placement. Our courses are carefully curated and designed to increase in level of difficulty, pace, and readiness for more mature content (e.g., Holocaust or other more grown-up situations and environments). Please also consider that Excelsior Classes’ courses are college-preparatory and may therefore be more advanced when compared to those of other institutions or curriculum companies. Again, please be sure to check for prerequisites. Ignoring prerequisites and student capability and maturity could result in your student struggling and being overwhelmed by the content and pace of the course.
If you need additional counsel, please contact the teacher of the specific course or write to registration@excelsiorclasses.com.
Excelsior Classes is a Supplementary Education Center/Program: Fully Accredited by the Accrediting Commission for Schools, Western Association of Schools and Colleges.
What this means is that our courses are fully accredited, but we are not a degree or diploma granting institution. Parents are still responsible for their student’s course selection and transcripts, and students do not need to be enrolled full-time. It provides families with great flexibility. Parents can use the final grade PDF provided by teachers at the end of any course as verification/proof of work completed. Parents can also log in as the student to print out a detailed gradebook if desired.
We have identified a vendor (Summit Education) who helps families who don’t want to create their own records. Email registration@excelsiorclasses.com if you wish to be placed in contact with this service.
To learn more about what ACS-WASC accreditation means and how it works, please visit this page.
Many of our courses are approved by the NCAA. See a course listing here. When the student is being recruited and has obtained an NCAA student number, we are able to directly send your student’s final grades as proof without any worry in terms of acceptance by NCAA.
During our NCAA approval and application process, we came to understand that our courses are a good fit for students who are preparing to play sports at the collegiate level. Because NCAA approval requires that our courses be on-level or above, our classes cannot be modified or changed, and live attendance should be the norm for student athletes. They must be able to remain at the pace of the class without major modifications or missing many assignments with extensions. This is great training for collegiate sports as those students must balance academics and sports without receiving extensions or special allowances. Since college athletes at D1 schools spend upwards of 80 hours per week on sports, time management is essential.
Please note that we are not able to modify our NCAA classes for learning disabilities or differences. Any NCAA student with learning differences or disabilities must discuss the matter with the individual teacher(s) PRIOR TO ENROLLMENT to ensure the course will be a good fit. Failure to disclose disabilities or difficulties and discussing whether the class is appropriate for the student may result in dismissal of the student from the class. Refunds will not be issued in such circumstances.
Teachers provide accountability through online instruction, feedback, grading, and testing for the course. Our teachers will treat your student with respect and interact with them in an encouraging manner.
Teachers always copy parents on all correspondence via email. All teachers provide an email and a phone number and are available to answer targeted questions or for brief meetings in the classroom by appointment with enough notice.
We do not use the inbox function in our LMS or in the LMS app to communicate. All communication is done using email so that various parties may be copied and we have an easily accessible record of communication among parties.
Our standard of practice is that teachers and administration will respond to email within 24 hours of receipt excluding weekends and holidays. Please recognize that teachers live across the continental US, and that teachers and administration may not respond to communication received in their evening time until the next day.
Teachers are not private tutors, so we ask that both parents and students understand that teachers are not able to provide unlimited amounts of time in responding to questions or for outside-class meetings.
Teachers are able to interact with students during class using a chat feature to answer questions and ensure student understanding. Away from class, our Learning Management System (LMS) allows your student to take quizzes and tests, submit papers or other work, and discuss in small groups with the teacher or with other students. The teacher will assign grades, and monitor student progress over the course of the semester looking for advances in skills and knowledge. Aside from quizzes and tests, teachers will use projects, discussion posts, and papers graded by rubrics to discern student mastery.
Parents may view the gradebook at any time by logging in as your student or using the parent app. At the end of the semester or year, parents may print out the gradebook. The teacher will send a final grade to parents via PDF at the end of the course. Please note that the Canvas parent app has limited viewing, but parents can see an overall view of student work.
For junior high and high school students, the parent should provide general oversight of the student’s work. Parents should ensure that the student attends class, has the proper materials, and is progressing. This is easily done by logging in as your student and checking the gradebook on a weekly basis. Teachers will do the grading of quizzes, tests, and other projects. Providing class materials and a functioning computer and microphone is crucial as well.
For younger students, the parent should provide general oversight as described above and assist the student with ensuring that all assignments are complete. We advise that a parent or older sibling with a measure of keyboarding skills sit with or near your pupil for the first several classes to see what works best for your student. Your student may need a few small assists navigating the technology.
Once registration has closed for a course, it is closed for that time period. Sometimes teachers allow students to join a full-year course for the spring semester only, but the student must be able to join at the point of instruction. Write to registration@excelsiorclasses.com if you would like to register mid-year, and our staff will see if the teacher and course are open to late registrants.
Our courses generally do not require a passing grade on a placement test for enrollment. However, math courses and foreign language classes do offer placement tests, which can be found on the respective course description pages. The feedback from these assessments helps parents determine the most suitable level for their child. For other subjects, teachers assess placement based on writing samples and discussions about the student’s previous experience in the subject matter. The prerequisites for any course are located on the course desciption page.
If you have questions or need guidance, you can contact the teacher directly using the email address provided on the course description page. Alternatively, you can email registration@excelsiorclasses.
It’s important to note that our placement guidance is designed to facilitate your child’s success rather than restrict course enrollment. While parents can choose to disregard placement advice, doing so may unnecessarily frustrate the student and could potentially require additional support, such as tutoring, if the course pace or content proves challenging.
Teachers are able to make some limited accommodations. This varies and is dependent upon individual teacher capability, knowledge set to work with the student, parent involvement, and our learning management system limitations. For NCAA students, our classes cannot be modified or changed.
NOTE: Please contact any teacher prior to enrollment to make sure the class, pace, and the instructor are a good fit for your student. Teachers do want to know about any special circumstances your student may face prior to paying the deposit and enrolling. A proper fit and placement are foundational for a good educational experience. Individual teachers can best advise whether the course is a fit and what accommodations can be made.
Generally, our teachers teach to the syllabus and cannot sacrifice content in order to stay in alignment with educational goals, class participant expectations, and NCAA approval of our courses. Many of the classes build on sequential knowledge, so accommodations are usually limited to those that do not eliminate assignments or require only minor modifications. We do not slow the pace or eliminate assignments in a course.
Refunds of a deposit are not provided for lack of consultation of the teacher prior to enrollment; refunds of tuition paid to the teacher are not provided after the first week of class should the teacher not have been consulted prior to enrollment. (Please see this part of our FAQ for more information as well as our current refund policy.)
Classes are recorded and can be viewed on a computer or a smartphone. The chat is not recorded in the main viewing recording, but a transcript of chat is available. Students are responsible for the material covered in class, so the recording should be viewed as soon as possible.
While live attendance is preferred, we have many students who must take classes via recording only. It can be done!
For NCAA students, live attendance is the expectation and norm.
For the majority of subjects, each student will be provided work equivalent to the other four days of the “work week.” The amount of time each day will vary based on the student and based on the class level. However, it is reasonable to assume that anywhere between 30 minutes and 1.5 hours will be required to complete each homework assignment. The assignments for the upcoming week are posted prior to class on a weekly page in the Learning Management System (LMS).
Math classes require a similar time commitment, although it is broken down a little differently. Math classes meet twice weekly for a total of 2 hours. In addition, students will be expected to complete HW, quizzes or exams, M-F which should take no longer than 1 hour per day as long as the student is placed in the correct math level.
For students involved in Independent Study, this will vary and must be addressed by the individual teacher.
Academic honesty is an important component of education. Using notes on assignments which specifically state not to use notes or outside sources is a violation of academic honesty. Plagiarism is the act of intentionally or unintentionally using someone else’s ideas or thoughts without providing credit. This includes using outside sources on work that specified not using someone else’s published thoughts, cutting and pasting from one document or webpage into your work, and/or not providing a citation or credit within your work to the other source. It also includes using outside sources on a test within the LMS unless specifically allowed to do so.
Academic honesty also entails not using tools outside of the teacher’s instructions and the LMS unless specified by the teacher. Please see our AI Statement below and here.
Teachers at Excelsior Classes understand that students are still students and are learning, but it is vital that we impart to our students that cheating or plagiarizing is dishonorable and has extreme consequences. In the first two instances of flagrant plagiarism or cheating, a student will receive a zero for the assignment with parent notification. Grades with a zero for plagiarism or cheating are not dropped as part of any amnesty or dropped grade policy on the part of the teacher. Subsequent offenses will require administrative involvement and may result in a final grade not being provided or a failing grade being assigned for the entire course.
We ask that parents work diligently to ensure that all protocols and procedures specified by individual teachers are followed to ensure that we are all providing a robust academic experience for our students.
AI-generated work (like ChatGPT) is emerging and evolving. It is advanced and advancing more every day. AI-generated platforms can write essays, form articulate responses, answer test questions, edit and revise work, brainstorm ideas, locate source material or quotes from novels and add those into text, and more. This is problematic because AI-generated work is not necessarily taken from a single identifiable source on the internet; rather, these responses are composed from multiple places and are “newly” generated. Additionally, these platforms can be told to change tone and wording to make it seem more like a student wrote it. This does not mean, however, that using AI-generated work is not plagiarism. AI-generated work is still considered plagiarism and will be handled as such.
Students should commit to generating their own ideas in conversation with their teachers, peers, and approved resources given by or approved by their teachers. Using AI may be tempting, but it ultimately squelches a student’s academic growth and critical thinking skills. When students do not learn to generate and articulate their own ideas, it is ultimately a disservice to their faith, their academic pursuits, and their careers.
While Excelsior Classes teachers will do what they can to prevent and identify the use of AI-generated work (including running work through ChatGPT Zero and similar sites), the responsibility to work ethically ultimately falls to parents and students. Please understand individual teachers’ expectations regarding the use of any outside sources in conjunction with course assignments and abide by those expectations.
Teachers are responsible for setting their individual late work policies and for due dates while providing firm accountability for your student. If a student must miss work due to illness or death in the family, please notify the teacher as soon as possible. If the student will miss due to vacation or other school opportunities, please notify the teacher well in advance. In order to keep our grading turnaround timely, most teachers do not typically accept or grade excessively late work, but work may be acquired in advance. Extensions are not normally provided for reasons other than illness or death in the family.
We request that parents notify teachers of illness or emergencies.
Excelsior Classes strives to provide meaningful accountability, fair treatment of students, timely turnaround of grades, and an opportunity to learn prioritization and time-management skills. We appreciate parents understanding that requests for extensions (frequent or not for reasons specified above) will not be honored in order to support those objectives.
Work not submitted in the format specified by the teacher (e.g., a picture instead of a Google Doc file), will not be accepted and will be given a zero until submitted within the guidelines specified by the teacher for acceptance of late work. All work must be submitted within Canvas for a grade. We cannot accept emailed submissions.
If a student runs into a technical problem, a screenshot is helpful and should be sent to the teacher immediately. Some teachers may require parent verification of the technical issue.
NOTE: Excelsior Classes courses run to a strict calendar schedule; it is not possible to provide students with open windows of late submission. In order to maintain our high standards and course integrity, we do not excuse major assignments or large amounts of work, nor do we allow unlimited access to our materials past the date of course completion.
This policy outlines expectations for student conduct. Parents sign an agreement during the registration process acknowledging and agreeing to abide by the policy.
This policy is posted on the Home page of all Canvas courses:
Our Excelsior Students are the best students!
To keep our learning community thriving and comfortable as well as conducive to learning, we ask students to do the following:
Failure to comply with these guidelines while in a Zoom classroom or in the Excelsior Classes Canvas instance can result in disciplinary action (ranging from dismissal from live classes for a period of time or automatic grades of zeroes for an act of plagiarism or cheating). These are handled on a case-by-case basis by the teacher and/or administration.
Students sending abusive or threatening emails/messages to other students, teachers, or administration may be banned from live attendance altogether or even removed from classes. There are no refunds in these instances.
Excelsior Classes recognizes that students are students and not adults. Any necessary discipline of a student will be approached with concern for the student’s spiritual, moral, and academic growth. We desire to offer both justice and mercy. Discipline of any student remains a private matter between the student, the teacher, the parent, and any relevant counselors, and it will not be discussed with others, including any students reporting a violation of the Student Conduct Policy.
The Student Conduct Policy does not extend outside of our Excelsior Classes platforms except in extreme circumstances (e.g., threat of bodily harm, violence, pornography, etc.). Parents are encouraged to monitor student use of external communication tools and technologies.
Students involved in any of our honor societies or clubs or holding a leadership position are expected to exhibit exemplary behavior reflective of high moral character and represent themselves and Excelsior Classes in an honorable way whether in class or outside of class. Those subject to disciplinary action may have their membership in societies and clubs revoked and/or offices removed.
Any student who has been subject to disciplinary measures will not be considered for scholarships or other awards.
Excelsior Classes shares student information with teachers to facilitate communication between the student, parent, and teacher. Parents are always copied on any communication to a student.
Please note that Excelsior Classes does not use the internal inbox within the Canvas LMS so that parents can be copied on all communication with students. Teachers cannot respond to messages within Canvas. Students should get in the practice of copying parents when emailing teachers so that they may receive a timely response. Messages sent within the Canvas app may not receive any response, so please make sure to use your own email system when contacting teachers or administration.
Excelsior Classes does not share any information with outside parties unless requested by the parent to do so.
We ask that students not share private information such as phone numbers, social media information, or other communication platforms such as discord servers, etc,. in Excelsior’s Canvas classrooms or in our Zoom classrooms. While we know these are common forms of communication today, Excelsior Classes does not promote, endorse, sponsor, or monitor any such extraneous platform activity. Parents are encouraged to monitor student use of such technologies.
From time to time, teachers may post a “contact outside of class” discussion post in which students may post an email address only. Teachers will alert parents to the existence of this discussion post prior to its opening, and students are permitted to post an email address in the discussion forum only with parent permission. If you choose to let your students share their email, parents are responsible for monitoring any technologies used.
For students who wish to connect having met each other in one of our Excelsior Classes events, a parent may write to registration@excelsiorclasses.com and request to be placed in contact with the parent of the student. The staff in registration will connect the parents first, and they can take any subsequent action or have further communication themselves.
You can learn more about our privacy policy (including data use for the website) here.
Since parents are copied on all emails, we do not use the inbox function in our LMS to communicate. All communication is done using email so that parents can be copied.
We ask that students get in the habit of copying the parent’s email address when corresponding with teachers.
We also value student privacy. We ask that students not share private information such as phone numbers, social media information, or other communication platforms such as discord servers, etc,. in Excelsior’s Canvas classrooms or in our Zoom classrooms. While we know these are common forms of communication today, Excelsior Classes does not promote, endorse, sponsor, or monitor any such extraneous platform activity. Parents are encouraged to monitor student use of such technologies.
From time to time, teachers may post a “contact outside of class” discussion post in which students may post an email address only. Teachers will alert parents to the existence of this discussion post prior to its opening, and students are permitted to post an email address in the discussion forum only with parent permission. If you choose to let your students share their email, parents are responsible for monitoring any technologies used.
For students who wish to connect having met each other in one of our Excelsior Classes events, a parent may write to registration@excelsiorclasses.com and request to be placed in contact with the parent of the student. The staff in registration will connect the parents first, and they can take any subsequent action or have further communication themselves.
Excelsior Classes features live, online courses that are engaging, college-preparatory, and couched in a Christian worldview.
What do we mean by live?
Each teacher hosts a live session each week, with some math courses meeting twice per week. The teacher presents and instructs the classroom of students in a live setting, and students are encouraged to participate in the discussion, lecture, breakout sessions, etc., using the tools incorporated in Zoom and other online tools such as chat, video, and microphone. The courses are not pre-recorded, and personal interaction between the teacher and students allows for enhanced and customized learning.
Excelsior Classes allows teachers to use discretion with students’ use of both audio and video. Our most important goal is learning and spending time wisely in the live sessions. To that end, teachers are always on video except when experiencing technical difficulties that require shutting off video for a short period of time.
Excelsior Classes teachers do not always require students to be on camera. It has been our experience that requiring “all on cameras all the time” is the equivalent of sitting everyone in multiple circles in a physical classroom. It’s hard to maintain focus for both instructors and learners, and it can be highly distracting for certain modes of learning. Our flexible, teacher-discretion policy allows teachers to decide when to “sit in circles.” 😁 It allows families a measure of privacy if desired. It also promotes better classroom management, limits distractions, and helps students with social anxiety. Some learners find multiple small screens distracting, and sometimes noise and background activities inside other homes are not optimal for learning. We prefer to err on the side of flexibility for teachers and learners than to enforce a rigid rule that may actually hamper learning outcomes.
It is important to note that the effectiveness of Zoom classrooms and video-based learning can vary depending on the teaching strategies, content, student age, and subject matter.
While Zoom classrooms and video can offer several advantages in terms of access, flexibility, and interactive learning, their impact on student outcomes is complex and multifaceted. It is crucial to consider various factors, including technological limitations, distractions, and the need for effective teaching strategies, to optimize the learning experience and enhance student outcomes.
We trust that our teachers can manage these various challenges and incorporate tools and technologies to accomplish learning outcomes while building community. For these various reasons, teachers may limit student video at certain times during class. Having said this, we encourage the use of microphone and video by students when deemed appropriate by the teacher. We want to build community!
Sometimes teachers require student video and microphone use for assignments such as presentations. There are no exceptions for participation in this regard. Check with individual teachers to find out if a particular course requires presentations.
Sometimes students need a letter of reference for college admissions or scholarship opportunities and want to request from an Excelsior Classes instructor. Students should consider whether the teacher knows them well enough, whether the student has participated well in class, and whether the teacher can vouch for personal details. Often teachers are not in a position to provide adequate feedback on these areas, and you may want to consider asking another adult. This blog is an excellent overview of the reference letter “dilemma.”
Nevertheless, many of our teachers do write letters of reference. Some considerations before asking would include:
Teachers ask that these be made well in advance. Requests made without sufficient time may not be fulfilled.
Teachers would want to see the information about the opportunity you are applying for as well as additional information about the applicant that might be important to know. Please have that information ready for the teacher when asking for the reference.
Teachers need clear information on how to submit and when.
Teachers may or may not want to share the feedback with you. If the teacher does not want to share, we ask that you respect their process and privacy.
