Two of the three engineers that I work with regularly will not allow anyone to knock on their office door. If it is open, you're welcome to come in and ask them a question. But when it is closed, they are architecting systems and solving huge problems with design, and they refuse to let anyone else disturb that process unless it is an emergency. And if you do ask them a question or even make a comment when they're focused on programming, it takes a while for them to "surface" to answer you.
The reason I point this out is that I've become very aware that a lot of the traits that make someone excellent at their job are the very same traits that annoy teachers and make kids feel inadequate in school.
My son also focuses deeply on projects, takes a bit to surface and pivot to something new, and will sometimes "waste" time in class that he could be doing work because he says it isn't enough time to get into it and get it done, so he'd rather wait until he gets home. I've had to come down on him for chatting and disrupting others when he's opted to wait until he gets home and am working on helping him break tasks down into 10-minute bites so that he can do parts of his work at school.
But to a certain extent, I'm not going to let him think focusing intensely is a bad thing, because it's not.
