What does a pre-K student in Gorham have in common with a high school senior doing a professional internship across town? If Aspire has anything to say about it — quite a lot.
Gorham school staff and students provided an update on the PK–12 Aspire initiative to the School Committee on April 8. Begun in 2017, Aspire is built on a simple but powerful idea: every student, at every grade level, should be able to find purpose in their learning and see a connection between school and their future. Since then, the program has grown into one of the most comprehensive career-readiness systems in the region.
“The vision was that every student, in every grade, would find purpose in their learning, and inspiration in imagining their successful future,” Kelli Deveaux, the Career Aspirations and Community Coordinator, told the School Committee.
That vision has taken root across all three levels of the Gorham school system. Elementary students now participate in career fairs, STEAM family nights, and intentional field trips designed to expose them to the wide variety of careers that exist right in their own community. At the middle school, hands-on programming like Try-It Day, Bio-Lab, A Day of Adulting, and Health & Wellness Careers Day give students an early taste of real-world pathways.
At the high school level, the centerpiece of Aspire is the Extended Learning Opportunity program, known as ELOs. Launched in 2019 with just nine students, ELOs allow high schoolers to earn academic credit through internships, job shadows, research projects, and community-based experiences tied to their individual career interests. The growth has been remarkable — more than 55% annually on average — and interest shows no sign of slowing. For the 2026–2027 school year, over 200 junior and senior students have already expressed interest in participating.
The ELO experience is structured as a 60+ hour, semester-long, 0.5-credit course. Students spend the first five weeks on career exploration and skill development before securing an internship placement. From weeks 6 through 20, they work on-site with a community mentor, with ongoing support from both their instructor and their workplace supervisor. Students finish the semester with a formal reflection on what they learned — not just about a career field, but about themselves.
The program’s reach extends well beyond the classroom. Aspire has built a growing database of more than 350 businesses and community partners in the greater Gorham area, developed through relationships with the Gorham Business Roundtable and the Economic Development Office. These partners provide real-world perspectives on the skills students need, and feedback on how well the students that they mentor or employ are able to meet those expectations, giving real-time opportunities to check and correct curriculum and individual goals of students. Nearly every business and community partner has noted the value of the program, commenting they wish they had a program like this when they were in school.
The plan for the future of Aspire is to tap into these partnerships so that all teachers, all lessons and all students are able to tie the real-world examples into their learning — not just as special events, but as a part of daily learning.
For the students who have gone through it, the experience speaks for itself. Juniors Cora Ellsmore and Frank Veraneau shared their experiences with the Gorham Fire and Rescue and rebuilding a 1967 Impala with support from Doug Carter, respectively. Senior Grayson Cole shared her excitement with watching a robotic hernia surgery in the operating room, while Senior Izzy Phinney gushed about her yearlong, college credit ELO experience and student teaching at Great Falls Elementary as a member of a teacher apprentice cohort. All shared how their ELO placements gave them career clarity, real workplace skills, and mentorship relationships they couldn’t have found inside a classroom. One student described the internship as the first time school felt like it was actually preparing them for life ahead.
That, in a sense, is exactly what Aspire was designed to do — and judging by the numbers, Gorham’s students agree.