The Q13 television studio is an oasis of calm amid the whirlwind of hubbub in Auburn’s Junior Achievement BizTown.

Behind the camera, Emerald Hills Elementary School fifth-grader Kailen Bergerren silently cues his classmates, Trinity Wyse and Jonathan Williams, counting down with upheld fingers. Five … four … three … two … one … and Bergerren points as they go live, beaming out a newscast to their fellow BizTown participants.

Bergerren, Wyse and Williams aren’t actual Q13 employees, of course. It’s all pretend, although you’d be hard pressed to guess this, watching these and other BizTown participants going through their assigned tasks.

Since 2004 Junior Achievement has offered BizTown, a simulation of the adult business world, giving fifth-graders throughout the region a taste for a day of what it’s like to run a business, balance a budget and manage employees.

“In the fifth-grade program at BizTown, the young people become employees, consumers and they become citizens,” explains Junior Achievement of Washington spokesperson Joanne Kahl. “They really conduct a full economy at BizTown. And they come very prepared and focused.”

Throughout BizTown, which features mockups of businesses such as Best Buy, IKEA and Q13, the students go briskly about their tasks as working adults.

“I sign all the checks and give the bills to people that have bought advertising,” said Williams, the Q13 CEO. “Our ad exec goes out after I print the bills, and hands them out. I may do a couple if it’s real busy.”

The program at JA World in Auburn – along with its companion, Finance Park, which teaches financial literacy to middle and high schoolers – is one of the capstone programs for JA, Kahl explained.

“Our core purpose is to empower young people to own their economic success,” she said. “Junior Achievement is really a great partnership with education. The statistics of where we are with graduating our kids is a huge issue. If you think about it, it wasn’t that long ago we were the No. 1 nation in graduating our children from high school. Now we’re not even in the top-20. So we need to inspire kids about their futures. Inspire them now so they understand that in our free market system in America and if they have a dream, they can make that dream a reality. Education is that first step in making that dream come true.”

In Washington State Junior Achievement reaches about 100,000 students in 5,000 classrooms, Kahl said. At the Auburn location, 20,000 students go through the BizTown and Finance Park programs annually. And with up to 29,000 kids dropping out of high school yearly in the state, according to Kahl, anything that can make an impact and inspire children to believe in their financial future is important.

“What we have at this facility, and at the one in Yakima as well, is the greatest offering we’ve ever had as an organization,” Kahl said.

For fifth-grade teacher Russell Anderson, the BizTown experience is a vital piece of his teaching curriculum every year.

For weeks leading up to the actual outing at JA World, Anderson and parents and volunteers from the business world prepare the students.

“We’ve been doing this for about six years,” Anderson said. “It teaches them personal responsibility along with teamwork. They begin to see how close to reality it really is.”

Anderson continued: “They come back from this exhausted, but so fulfilled. It’s really amazing. A lot of them will say they have started to appreciate more what their parents do.”

The impact on the students after their BizTown experience is also noticeable, Anderson added: “There is a self-confidence boost,” he said. “At our school we talk about respect, responsibility and safety. Here they have to put those into practice in an environment different than school. And it starts to hit home with them when they see it here.”

For the kids, the experience is a real eyeopener as well.

“I’m the CFO at Ikea, I manage all the finances and bills,” Adam Sjolund said. “I think BizTown is really cool, how it shows how it really is in real life.”

“It’s awesome,” Bergerren added. “Being an adult and in a business is hard to do.”