Have you taken your tax credit?

What if you could determine where your tax dollars go? What if you were in charge of the congressional purse strings?

The Arizona School Tax Credit allows you to do just that. You can send your tax dollars directly to Telesis Preparatory Academy in order to foster after-school and extra-curricular activities. Parents are always talking about how important these activities are; well here’s your chance to put your money where your heart is. Here’s an example of how it might work:

Jane Doe, a single tax payer, will owe $100 to the state of Arizona when her taxes are due April 15. She doesn’t know that yet, but she wants to give some money to her daughter’s school because she’s seen a lot of success with their after-school music program. The music teacher sent home a note asking parents to designate tax credit funds to the music program so they can replace and repair worn-out instruments. Her daughter doesn’t participate in the program now, but she’d like to next year. Jane decides to donate $100 to the program. When she prepares her taxes in the spring, she owes nothing to the State because her tax credit donation reduced her liability to zero.

What if Jane Doe only donated $50? It would reduce her liability by $50, and she would end up owing $50 to the State.

What if she donated $200? If she donated more than she was liable for, the leftover funds would be applied to next year’s liability, so she would owe nothing this year and still get another $100 reduction next year.

The Arizona Department of Revenue has put together a brochure you can view that will probably answer most questions. If you have other questions, give us a call.

National Bill of Rights Day

What is the fundamental nature of a right?

Is there a real definition of what a right is?

How can we protect things that often seem so amorphous?

In today’s world, can we really hearken to what the founders wrote about rights?

Telesis teachers and students respond with what you think.

Telesis Girls Teach Lesson in Courage

Yesterday was my birthday and it wasn't until Friday that I finally figured out what I wanted.

Just the other day I took an online quiz, and one of the questions was what character from the Wizard of Oz am I most like. I thought I was a perfect fit for the scarecrow, but after Friday I now know that I'm more like the cowardly lion than I'd like to admit.

I want what the cowardly lion wanted - courage. I don't want your run of the mill courage. I want the courage that I saw exhibited by the Lake Havasu Telesis girls basketball team.

Before Telesis took on our Kingman Academy of Learning, I did some research on the league's Web site and saw that Telesis was 0-1. The Web site reported a score of 75-0, but that couldn't have been right, could it?

Unfortunately, it was correct. And it is correct that KAOL beat them 68-0 on Friday.

Stephen Crane wrote "The Red Badge of Courage" in 1895. If he had seen the play of Telesis on Friday, he would have never written his book and would have allowed someone in the year 2007 to write it. It was truly as remarkable a show of courage that I have ever seen take place on a basketball court or any athletic field. Ever.

After losing their opening game to Quartzsite Scholars, I am left to wonder what was going on in the minds of those young ladies. Did they consider quitting? I hope not. The Telesis Tigers have a lot to offer to those who witness their games.

I do know that they aren't quitters. Telesis did not lay down one bit against KAOL. They kept trying and trying. I only saw one moment where one of their players got frustrated. Her coach quickly took the time to talk to her, and that was the end of that.

I have to look at myself through the mirror that the Telesis team has held up in front of me. Do I have what it takes to come off of a 75-0 drubbing and be willing to face another one?

As I begin another trip around the bright yellow orb in the sky, I have discovered that I need a dose of Telesis-like courage.

When my boss hands me that assignment that presses me down to the core, I will remember Telesis and what they have given me, even if they don't realize it.

I'll leave our cozy little confines here at the Miner and face the challenge as if I was trying to score a basket.

I have to do this. Though Telesis scored nothing, they didn't try for nothing. It is my moral responsibility to the Telesis Lady Tigers that their effort on Friday never goes down in history as nothing.

After all, they gave me the best birthday present I could have ever asked for.

Shawn Byrne

Miner Sports Writer

Environmental Club News

The newly formed environmental club at Telesis, The Green Team, is pleased to announce our campus wide recycling program for plastic bottles. Thanks to the help of Allied Waste Services of Lake Havasu we now have special recycling receptacles around campus. The "Greenies" are hoping to have can recycling soon as well. The club is also putting out a newsletter on campus. Go to www.epa.gov/kids/you.htm for more helpful hints.

"RECYCLE YOUR CELL PHONE. IT'S AN EASY CALL."

The federal government's EPA has announced "Recycle Your Cell Phone. It's An Easy Call." The EPA has partnered with the following companies: AT&T Wireless, Best Buy, LG Electronics, Motorola, Nokia, Office Depot, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Sprint, Staples, and T-Mobile in this campaign.

Recycling a cell phone offers an opportunity for everyone to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, save energy, and conserve natural resources. An estimated 100 to 130 million cell phones are no longer being used, many languishing in storage. If Americans recycled 100 million phones, we could save enough upstream energy to power more than 194,000 U.S. households for a year. If consumers were able to reuse those 100 million cell phones, the environmental savings would be even greater, saving enough energy to power more than 370,000 U.S. homes each year.

Right now less than 20 percent of unwanted cell phones are recycled each year. LET'S CHANGE THIS. RECYCLE THAT OLD PHONE AND SAVE RESOURCES!

What is a Teacher?

To a mind of flint, the teacher must be iron, and strike sparks.

To the empty pitcher, the teacher becomes a well.

To the fallow mind, a planter of seeds.

To the cluttered mind, a gardener to weed, shape,

and clear a space for growing.

To the lens, the teacher is light, and to the mind of light, a lens.

To the sleeper, the teacher is the wake-up call of birds at sunrise.

To clay, the teacher is potter, sculptor, and trainer in self-shaping.

To the wanderer, the teacher is a knowing guide.

To the developed mind, the teacher is colleague, listener, friend.

To all, the teacher is a mirror that shows not only the self

but the path and its choices,

the task and its demands--the difficulties, the joys.

To all and from all, the teacher is a learner, a person-

-and a prism through which the ordinary continuously

reveals itself to be miraculous.

by Gerald Grow
Division of Journalism
Florida A&M University