In every other class they attended, they were known to their teachers and fellow students as Adyson, Ruth, Ava, Olivia, Lillian, and Addison. But to each other — inside a maze mimicking a burning house, blindfolded as they navigated a narrow passage of hanging ropes and wires — they are, to each other, Lamb Chop, Mumsy, Church Mouse, Phoenix, Baggage Claim and Nails.

For the emergency responders-in-training at Concord Regional Technical Center, being dubbed with these monikers is more than just a badge of membership in what will become their “work family,” it’s a mark that they will not leave the course the same person as they entered it.

“I’ve become completely different, just from this class,” said Ava Walker, a sophomore from Pittsfield whose nickname, “Church Mouse,” perhaps does not fit her as well as it did just a few months ago.

“The difference — you can see it from every single one of us — if you were here day one, versus now,” said Lillian “Baggage Claim” O’Hara, a Concord tenth-grader who insists she hardly speaks in her other classes.

As fire and emergency departments across New Hampshire struggle to fully staff their teams, the career and technical center in Concord is working to equip the next generation — one that has more women in it than ever before. For the first time in the course’s near-decade history, a majority of its students — 23 out of 44 — are female. In one of its first-year classes, 11 out of 13 are young women. The group is breaking barriers in the program, performing the first all-female operations drill at the school and setting a new speed record on one of its physical tests.

The emergency services program, which teaches both firefighting and EMT certifying skills, aims to build confidence and nurture leadership in all of its students, teaching them to collaborate, be confident and persevere.

“We don’t give them anything they don’t already have,” said Lt. Jim Duckworth, a 21-year member of the Concord Fire Department and instructor in the program since its inception eight years ago. “It’s Wizard of Oz stuff.”

But for the female participants, the program proves their capabilities not just to their instructors and to their future employers in the field — but to themselves.

“I feel like people in general are scared for women to join the fire service because we’re not strong enough — or they don’t think we’re strong enough,” said Kate Millerick, an eleventh-grader from Bow. “But in reality, we’re stronger in different ways. We’ve learned that in this class.”

When they signed up, many in the group expected to be the lone girl in the classroom. Even when that expectation was wrong, the first few days they were quiet, uncertain of each other, they said. It didn’t last.

Fighting through a training drill in full gear, learning new medical and first aid procedures, even on the rare day of bookwork, “It’s a quick lesson that you can’t get through it alone,” Bow senior Kate Labrecque said. “So you might as well like each other.”

The program’s physical demands and hands-on nature were a draw for all in the group, the vast majority of whom plan on entering the field when they graduate.

Getting to use their skills in the field — and to build relationships with departments, many of which extend job offers — on local “ride-alongs” is a favorite, and required, feature of the course.

“You need to be able to see what they actually do and what it actually takes to do this job,” O’Hara said.

“And if you know how to do something, you can just do it,” said Nicole Conway, a seventeen-year-old from Merrimack Valley.

In the maze, blindly pulling themselves towards two 165-pound victims they were tasked with rescuing from the imagined burning building around them, the group told each other to “Keep going, you got it!” as the dangling faux-electrical wires threatened to entangle their gear. Donated by members of the local mutual aid compact, the suits hung a bit loose in the shoulders and long in the legs.

Duckworth and fellow instructor Sam Atkins are used to seeing marked changes in his students. It’s by design, and as true this year as ever.

“Take Lamb Chop,” he said, referring to Concord junior Adyson Lamb. “She came here just wanting to be an EMT. She was like, ‘I really don’t want to do the fire stuff.’ Now she’s dragging people out of the building by herself.”

“I tell people all the time: this isn’t a fire class. It’s not an EMT class,” he continued. “What it really is, is we’re going to put hurdles in front of you and you’re going to overcome them.”

Edie Fischer, a student teacher and second-year student in the program, by her own admission was quiet and nervous when she started last year.

“I’m not nervous to do anything now. I jump on anything that gets handed to me,” she said. “I’ve had some people not think that I could be able to do things. That’s frustrating, but you push through and you show that you can do it and prove them wrong.”

The Emergency Services program has evolved since its start, Duckworth said, and those changes contribute to its growing popularity with students of all genders. The program has almost doubled since the start of the pandemic, Duckworth and CRTC Principal Anne Fowler said at a school board meeting on Monday, and has more female students than any of its kind in the state.

Early on, it was a six-month course. Growing the program to two years and adding medical services to the curriculum not only expanded opportunities for students after high school, but upped the number passing with their basic certifications. It also, as with Lamb, helped attract more female participants.

As the number of young women in the program has increased over the years, Duckworth has worked to ensure classes are guided by at least one female student-teacher and female instructor. He’s optimistic that the trend will continue.

Firefighter-paramedic Maryssa Spinney has been involved with training and teaching throughout her career and became involved with the program in CRTC after joining Concord Fire about a year ago. In her own paramedic and firefighter certification courses, she was one of few women, she said.

“It’s difficult at times, just because it is a very male-predominant field,” Spinney said. “I make sure that I feel comfortable with myself and being able to do my job — which means physically and mentally pushing myself to be better and to push harder than, in my mind, other people.”

She spoke highly of her coworkers in Concord and described her team as phenomenally supportive. “It’s about proving it to myself more than it is proving it to anybody else,” she said.

While she is impressed by the readiness of the young women in the program in Concord to “stick their necks out,” Spinney said, she measures all of her students the same.

“Anybody can do the job as long as you have the physical and mental power to do so,” she said. “I don’t really see them as male versus female in this course. You put effort into your course and you try to do the job, or you don’t.”

Students emphasized that leaving the program certified would be a key head-start on their careers. But they were also grateful for the supportive community and self-confidence that they’d take beyond the classroom walls.

O’Hara, who aspires to be a flight medic like those on the Dartmouth Hitchcock Aerial Response Team, said she knows she doesn’t look like someone who would normally pursue this career.

“But I hear people tell me all the time, ‘If you can do it, I can do it,’” she said. “It’s the best feeling.”