Community of Teachers thinks about growing confidence in terms of being able to more effectively and efficiently manage one's daily challenges. Through the research of Community of Teacher's founder, Joshua Faden, a model was developed that explains the five phases that every learner goes through whenever they encounter a challenge. This model is called TheChallenge Cycle. The five distinct phases of The Challenge Cycle are Increasing Receptivity, Increasing Awareness, Managing Frustration, Valuing Effort, and Valuing Challenge.
Whenever we face a challenge we go through all five phases. The journey can essentially be explained as:
First, when we face a challenge we begin to increase our receptivity to the problem. This phase is about introducing a learner to their own, unique learning process by cultivating an inquisitive mindset and helping them to believe in their capability as a learner and to see different possibilities for learning.
Once we understand the difficulties and believe that we can overcome them, we begin to increase our awareness of our skills and concepts that could help us to overcome the problem. This second phase is about helping a learner to see the opportunities that their learning process present them by teaching them about when, how, and why to use the skills they acquire.
At the third phase of the cycle we learn to manage our frustrations and to realize that we know more than we might be giving ourselves credit for at the moment. This phase is about helping a learner to integrate the learning process into their daily lives by recognizing when, how, and why to use each part of their learning process to achieve various goals.
As a learner integrates their skills and accepts the work they need to put in to achieve their goals, they begin to inch closer to valuing their effort. This fourth phase is about helping a learner to understand and appreciate the hard work that it takes to achieve their goals by explicitly demonstrating the benefits of each accomplishment, and demonstrating how their effort has impacted their overall confidence and skills.
Finally, we can even learn to value the challenges themselves. This fifth phase is about cultivating a lifelong learner by infusing and recognizing exciting learning experiences in their daily lives and teaching them to find the joy that comes from being able to learn from every encounter.
Contact Community of Teachers today to learn more about how to manage your daily challenges and how to more effectively and efficiently complete The Challenge Cycle whenever you encounter a challenge.
Learn more about The Confidence Constellation toolkit to better understand how to support ourselves and our children in growing and maintaining confidence.