Acme Mental Arithmetic Academy

Over at Sector 61 in the Royal Estate Garden area, we have the Acme Mental Arithmetic Academy. It’s a place where we work with kids on their math skills using abacuses and other methods. It’s often quite loud because we have groups of children all trying to shout out their answers at the same time. We’ve got a few classrooms that we’ve decorated with some simple posters, but mostly it’s just chairs and small desks. The location near the garden is nice because it’s a bit greener than the rest of the city. We spend our time preparing lesson plans and talking to parents who are worried about their children’s grades. It’s a lot of repetition, teaching the same number patterns over and over, but you get used to the pace. Sometimes we run out of chalk or the markers go dry, and we have to run out and get more. We aren't some high-end private school with a big budget; we’re just a local academy trying to do something useful. The floor usually needs a good sweeping after the kids leave because they tend to drop bits of paper everywhere. We’re just regular people who enjoy working with numbers, and we’ve made a little home for ourselves here in Sector 61. It’s a busy, noisy, but satisfying way to spend the day, and we wouldn't have it any other way. We even have a small clock on the wall that runs five minutes fast.