Tourism, on the whole, has been good for her students. The income it brings has funded real improvements to the local education system, and contact with tourists has visibly widened what her students are curious about. As preparation for an eventual, inevitable encounter with the wider world, she sees that as a genuine benefit — not something to be nervous about.
The town itself looks different too. Garbage gets collected more reliably now; houses and roads have improved, funded in part by tourism income. There's more for young people to actually do — discos and other entertainment that simply didn't exist before.
It is their future that we are deciding about, but unfortunately, they are never asked their opinion when it comes to taking important decisions.
That's the one thing she keeps coming back to. For all the visible improvement, young people are rarely if ever consulted about how their own environment, and their own future in it, should develop — a gap she thinks needs closing, not because the improvements aren't real, but because the people living longest with the consequences have the least say in shaping them.
Better classrooms, she says, are only half the lesson. The other half is being asked what you think.