He loves to learn new things but he has to feel like he's in charge and it needs to be fun for him or he loses interest.
I'm trying to see this from both perspectives. On the one hand, a strict teacher can be tough on kids. So from their perspective, that's hard. If there are two or more fifth grade teachers, you might want to ask the administration if your son could be placed with the one he'd fit best with. I'd be very careful about phrasing: you don't want to offend or annoy the principal.
At the same time, I can also see that, from a teacher's perspective, a fourth-grader who has to feel like he's in charge would be very frustrating. He's in fourth grade and doesn't have a right to be in charge. Full stop.
I teach my kids that there are things they have to do that aren't fun.
I think this lesson is an extremely important one. We all have to focus on stuff that isn't fun if we're going to get through life: we have to write documents we don't want to write or work with software we aren't especially excited about or whatever. This kind of thing is typically a means to a desired end. In school, students need to learn stuff that isn't particularly fun, and that's just a reality of life. I don't think it's reasonable to expect a teacher to make everything fun for your son.
For me, learning can be hard work, but the feeling I get out of applying hard-earned knowledge is way more satisfying that short-term fun with learning could be. Sometimes stuff is hard or not super-exciting, but when ideas sink in, they can be applied in new ways. This is where intelligent people excel. But the ideas have to get inside the mind before they can be manipulated, and getting to that point isn't always fun.
