The Language of Choice

So at the beginning of the school year they give you all kinds of training to help you survive. It's actually an overwhelming amount of information thrown at you so you end up drowning anyways....but that's not the point! One of the classroom management techniques they teach you is called the language of choice. When a child is misbehaving you give them 2 choices with the intent that the child will choose the good choice. This way the student feels empowered and it doesn't turn into a power struggle. I use it alot and it really does work. The only problem is coming up with 2 choices that won't get ME into trouble! For example when one of my students is acting out and not doing his/her work for the millionth time this year I usually say something like "you can either chose to follow my directions and get back to work or you can chose to go to time out or you can chose to sit out at teacher PE etc" you get the idea. Now what I REALLY want to say is "you can either choose to follow my directions or I will choose to beat you like your mamma should have!" But I suppose that would be less effective. Or would it?......... :)