/johnny
My trig teacher started us with fractions and ratios. Spent three weeks on it till we were bored out of our minds. We kept hanging in because he had the day that we were going to start Trig marked on the calender. So we actually started Trig 3 weeks late.
When the day came, he drew a circle and told us that all of trig can be expressed as the ratio between the adjacent, opposite and hypotenuse sides of a triangle. You could hear the whole class go .... “oh wow” as the light bulb came on.
We finished the year 3 weeks ahead of schedule because we “got it” up front. And in my mind, the review of fractions and ratios was WELL worth the effort.
“A 10th grade ‘educator’ screwed me up on trig so bad...”
I had an excellent trig teacher in 11th grade. I occasionally paid attention, never did the homework, and got horrible grades, but I learned that damned unit circle.
When I took trig in college, I didn’t learn anything in that class (and neither did anyone else, from what I saw), but I just practiced the stuff I learned in high school and killed the curve for everyone else.
Trig is an easy class to screw up if you have a bad teacher (or don’t do the homework).