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Harvard-bound student credits BPS education

Hyde Park teen tells how teachers and a push from mom helped him aim high

Eliza Dewey
Harvard-bound student credits BPS education
Ericardo Edwards and Michelle Trail-Edwards speak with the Banner in Harvard Square.

To those who know him, it is probably not surprising that local high schooler Ericardo Edwards was accepted to all fourteen colleges he applied to and is headed to Harvard in the fall. Edwards has dedicated his high school years to his studies — especially his favorite subjects, Italian and Latin — and his music as a clarinet- and saxophone-player in four different school bands.

But he says Harvard wasn’t always a given for him.

Edwards says a key moment in his growth happened while he was a student at Boston Latin School. He says that while in his early years there he “played things safely,” it was the intervention of an observant teacher that pushed him to challenge himself.

“He told me I was doing myself a big injustice by not taking advanced math,” Edwards says. “I really respect my teacher for telling me that.”

The push was enough to get him to sign up for a slew of advanced placement classes, which proved difficult due to the sudden onslaught but also helped prepare him for future academic success.

The teacher was one of many people Edwards says who helped him become a top-level student.

“I didn’t grow up in a vacuum,” he says. “Children are a product of their environment, and I thank my mom a lot that my environment was very positive.”

Edwards speaks glowingly of every school he’s attended, reaching back to the William H. Ohrenberger elementary school in Hyde Park.

He continues his list of praises with a passionate defense of the William B. Rogers Middle School, which school officials recently decided to close in an effort to reel in ballooning costs.

“I was very, very saddened by the Boston Public Schools even thinking about closing the Rogers, because they really set me up for success,” he says adding that he isn’t the only graduate of the school to go on to bigger and better things. “We’re all doing really well,” he says of his cohort. “We owe that to the Rogers, I can’t stop thanking them.”

Mother on a mission

It wasn’t easy getting him into great schools, however, says Edward’s mother, Michelle Trail-Edwards.

“Needless to say, [great schools] came with a price, because we never received any assistance, so I always paid higher rents to live in these better communities just so he could attend better schools,” she says.

As a single mother, however, Trail-Edwards decided early on that she would not let anything stop her.

“We were not going to yield to stereotypes of a child coming out of a broken home with a mom raising him,” she says. “I was determined to raise him the best that I can. We have a really tight family structure, and I really believe in the relationship between parents and teachers.”

Her strong belief in school engagement in particular became a pillar of her son’s journey. She says she was sometimes the only parent at parent-teacher conferences, but that the effort paid off because the more she communicated with teachers, the more interest they showed in her son.

And she is firm that she wanted the public school system in particular to get the job done.

“I was encouraged earlier on to sign him up for the Metco program, or to sign him up for the charter schools,” she says. “But I refused, because I believed that the Boston Public Schools is a great system, and I don’t feel that living in Boston and paying my taxes in Boston, I should have to send my child out to a suburban school to get a good education. I wanted to challenge the Boston Public Schools to give him a good education, and I am pleased to see the job that they have done with my child. I have no complaints, absolutely none.”

Funding a future

However, despite Edwards’ long list of colleges to choose from, there was a point even just recently when his future didn’t seem so clear. Despite the predictions of so many of his teachers, he only applied to Harvard after he had finished all his other applications because his mother pushed him to apply — he didn’t think he had a shot at the school.

He initially had his heart set on another local university, but his hopes were dashed when it became clear that the school couldn’t offer him nearly enough financial aid. Just two weeks ago, he and his mother returned home from a meeting at that school in tears because the financial aid package would have left them $26,000 short of tuition costs. It felt like he had gotten so close, only to fall short.

Just a few days later, however, he got the notice from Harvard that he was accepted — with enough financial aid to make his dream a reality.

So where will Edwards’ future lead? Unlike many rising freshmen, he has a clear answer of what he wants to do. He hopes to pursue global public health, which he finds fascinating for its interdisciplinary approach that he says provides “the most powerful way to tackle the spread of infectious diseases.”

And he’s not headed off on his journey alone. He is excited to be going with a number of good friends, some of whom he has known since seventh grade. He describes his peers’ accomplishments, speaking excitedly of one girl who has worked on early-detection technology for cervical cancer and another Boston Latin alum a year older than him who is an award-winning saxophonist.

“Are we even on the same wavelength?” he asks incredulously, surprised to find himself in the same cohort as his peers that he holds in such high esteem. He might not think so, but the Harvard admissions office certainly did.