That Awkward Moment when…Managing Student Embarrassment in the Academic Environment

I recently had a student send me an email to set up an appointment.  There was nothing particularly noteworthy about the message, except it was mistakenly signed at the bottom with the phrase “all my love” as the signature.  Before I even saw this message, the same student emailed me back one minute later in a panic.  His note in the second email read:

OMG I’m mortified!!!
I meant to sign “All the best,” NOT “all my love!” 
Please disregard that! 

His embarrassment was palpable; enough to make anyone cringe.  Remarkably, moments like this happen often within the academic environment.  I also once had a student in my class whose laptop was inside his backpack when it started to make noise.  Rather than calmly removing the laptop to turn off the noise, the student instead proceeded to stand up, grab his backpack, feverishly open the classroom door, and toss the backpack outside as if he never wanted to see the wretched thing again.  He coolly sat back down in his seat as if nothing had happened.  Awkward….

See the rest of this post in my guest contribution at the Techniques in Learning & Teaching (TILT) blog.