How can I productively react when students misbehave or act up?

I think that we haven't really touched on this much in class thus far. I feel like again, what I know about reacting to poor behavior is learned from my own experience as a pre-school/daycare teacher in the summers, my other mentoring experience, and from having siblings. However, I do think that I have learned much through these mediums. I have learned that putting a positive spin on the behavior, reacting proactively, is much more effective than simple reprimanding. I also know that within a certain point, discipline doesn't need to be scary. It can be in the form of reflection, or aimed at the different intelligences.

I think the resource or incident that helped me learned this the most thus far would be in my actual field placement, seeing and dealing with discipline issues first-hand; you learn quickly to choose your battles and what to say (and what not to say).

Again, I feel like if I knew anything about this already, it was from previous experience, nothing to do with the class being ill-suited in any way. I do however think that the class needs to focus more on the management piece.

One question that I have discipline wise is for common issues, like talking back, walking out, etc, when is the line drawn between the teacher dealing with it, and when it is time to have an administrator step in.