“Never use time to manage behavior that you can manage with your body.” – Dr. Fred Jones

Let’s focus on the fine points of body language. Remember that if you do it right and pay your dues up front by taking enough time with disruptions early on, you will rarely have to repeat the process. The cost effectiveness of limit-setting or any other successful discipline technique does not come from its being cheap the first time out but, rather from the fact that, when done properly, it self-eliminates over time.

Throughout limit-setting, the teacher is constantly communicating with the student in a dialogue of body language along three primary channels.  These channels and the messages communicated by each are:

1.  Confidence:  calm

2.  Commitment:  time

3.  Intensity:  proximity

Once we understand the main channels of communication and the messages being sent, the irony of communicating interpersonal power with body language becomes more apparent.  Any time you want to increase your power (1) shut up, (2) slow down, (3) relax, (4) get close, and (5) kill time.

Limit-setting, then, is little more than calmly killing time from a series of predetermined positions.  As the students bet, you move in.  When they fold, you stop, prompt them back to task if necessary, thank them politely, and slowly move out.  The students can bet as much as they want, but if you know how to play the game, you cannot lose.  Power is control, and control begins with self-control.  Stay in control of yourself long enough and you will eventually control the situation.  Yet, in a sense, the students are in control because they can get rid of you any time they want – by getting back to work.

excerpted from chapter 5 of Positive Classroom Discipline, by Dr. Fredric H. Jones