I (Anamaria) have been living in the U.S. for 6 years now, so I’ve had some time to notice some things that Americans do differently than Romanians. One of these things has to do with doors and windows.
photo by Dave_Durden
We close doors in Romania. And we open windows. I am not quite sure why we close doors, but I do know that we open windows to let the outside, clean air come in. Even if it’s freezing outside.
After having closed doors and opened windows for 24 years, I moved to the U.S., where I mostly lived in houses where you could not open windows (they were painted shut). As to doors, my American husband never closes them – except the front door.
Now I don’t close doors either.
What does this have to do with education?
Well, when I taught undergraduates at Indiana University, I noticed that, most times, the classroom doors were left open.
Because I was used to doors being closed, I had a very hard time adjusting to this, and leaving the classroom door open.
I remember that when I first started teaching, I had not noticed this open-door habit, so I entered the classroom and closed the door behind me. By the time the class should have started, I had no more students than there were in the classroom when I entered it.
Why?
Because the others were all gathered outside, waiting for the door to open. For them, the closed door meant that they were not supposed to come in (maybe the previous class was still going, right?).
And so I learned my lesson to not close the classroom door, especially before class starts. Unless I wanted to be left with no students attending my classes.
Does it matter whether doors are closed or open? I wonder if classroom doors, whether they are closed or open, have anything to do with power distance. Could we generalize and say that one is more likely to find open classroom doors in a more informal, low power distance culture? I wonder…
Question: Do you leave your classroom doors (and windows) open or closed?
Subscribe to our RSS feed and get notified of the next post in this series.
{ 4 comments }
I spent a year in Germany and France on a work exchange program while in college and noticed the same thing in reverse. It was an adjustment for me and other North Americans in the program, much like it was for you.
In fact, the newsletter we started was titled “The Open Door” in a very conscious attempt to keep open lines of communication. But ever since then, I have enjoyed keeping windows open and much cooler indoor temps. If it was up to me, I would keep our windows open much more often!
Thanks for the providing a reason to take a trip down memory lane!
Glenn, it was interesting to read your comment. It sounds like the closed doors in Germany made you feel like you were not welcome somewhere, like you needed to keep out (just like my students at Indiana University).
I first came to the US as an exchange high school student, and I lived with a wonderful American family for 5 months. Their son was convinced that I was doing something very suspicious in my room, since I always had the door closed.
I am curious about the newsletter that you started. Did the Germans understand where the name came from, or did you have to explain it?
I had the same experience as you, Glenn, when I lived in Germany. I remember standing outside a professor’s office once waiting (and waiting…) for him to arrive for office hours, not realizing he was inside his office behind a closed door, waiting for students to knock and go in.
I also spend time in Germany when I was younger, and loved the open window habit. I loved getting that fresh air in the house, but remember thinking it was odd that there were no screens to keep the bugs out.
For our household, though, the idea of closed doors was more so that they didn’t slam shut from the drafts.
Comments on this entry are closed.
{ 3 trackbacks }