The outline (and I'm remembering from a lesson i took five years ago) went something like this:
There is some status quo around which there is some element of dissatisfaction
There is an inciting incident or group of incidents of some kind which mobilizes those dissatisfied with the status quo
There is a period of conflict between those in power and those revolting
The revolutionary element seizes political control
(After this is when this outline begins to seem questionable to me)
The most extreme elements of the revolution generally exert the largest amount of influence
There is, as a result of this, usually a period of some kind of "reign of terror" around which the extremist revolutionary ideals are enforced aggressively
There is some sort of backlash against the "reign of terror" or enforcement of extremist revolutionary ideals (a coup, a counterrevolution, etc.)
Moderate elements eventually gain control and establish a new status quo
As I noted above, I remember thinking how how the second half of this outline especially seemed questionable. Is it so rare to have a "revolution of moderacy?" Do more extremist elements of political revolution actually overwhelmingly receive the most attention?
For context, this outline was presented in the context of the French Revolution.
So I suppose my question is: is this sort of thinking actually something to which historians lend credence? Or was this simply a teacher trying to make a much more complex subject more digestible for her students?
Your teacher is basically repeating the thesis presented by Crane Brinton in the book The Anatomy of Revolution, which actually does hold up somewhat well in the cases of 18th-mid 20th century revolutions. The Russian revolution or the Chinese Communist revolution follows the framework he laid out fairly well for instance.
The problem is that it doesn't hold up very well once you go past the 1970s and enter what Samuel Huntington called the "third wave of democratization", in which over a dozen revolutions worldwide overthrew a series of autocratic regimes on both the left and the right and did not follow through with many elements of Crane's thesis.
For instance, street demonstrations led to the end of autocratic rule in South Korea and the establishment of the democratic 6th Republic in 1987: this was not followed up by the domination of "extremist" elements and no subsequent "Thermidor" moment. In 1989 much of eastern Europe Communist rule fell and relatively stable rule by Democrats in countries including (but not limited to) Poland and the Czech Republic was established without any intermediate period of extremist control. Those are just some examples of how democratic revolutions was achieved in the last 40 years or so which transformed a world in which the majority of states were autocratic into a world where the majority of states are democratic (albeit very flawed ones in many cases): almost all without the sort of bloodshed which occurred in the French or Russian or Chinese revolutions.
That is not to say Crane's thesis -never- remains correct however, the Egyptian 2011 revolution fits this model very well for instance, and one could make the argument Russia post-1991 (with economic rather than political extremism) fits the model as well. But it is definitely incorrect to generalize all, or even most, revolutions as to fit this particular model.