I spoke with DSs teacher this week to see how he was doing.
She said that academically he was doing great, performance/scores are all good. However, he's distracted...again. He's not focusing...again. He's one of the last few to transition from one activity to the next...again. He was this way at the beginning of the school year, but had improved (alot, actually). Now, it seems he's backtracking in those areas. An example she gave was that during seatwork or independent work on any subject, he'll get up and go over to her desk to mention that he finished another book he was reading. She redirects him and he's OK for a bit, but then later, distracted again.
I'm not sure what, exactly, I think of all this. On the one hand, he gets his work done and is doing well, so is it really all bad? On the other hand, it's a classroom that she has to manage and she can't have 'behaviors' like this, basically because (I feel) it's disruptive on his part. Part of me thinks that if she doesn't feel it's enough of an issue to contact me about it (prior to my initiating a call), then I should just let it be. Although, I have a hard time not doing anything - which would be daily reminders to DS about focus and staying on task, etc.
We've seen some of this at home lately with homework, too. The hw is easy enough, he just doesn't want to do it. What, on a good day, would take 20 minutes, lately has been taking him all afternoon because he'd rather procrastinate than just get it done.
When I asked DS about all this, he says that 1)he's bored, 2)the work is challenging and he does have to work at it, 3)he doesn't know why he gets out of his seat or why it takes him so long to transition from one activity to the next. *I'm* thinking that the work isn't as challenging as he thinks it is if he's getting high marks and still has time to be off-task, if you will. "I'm bored" for him usually means he doesn't like whatever it is he's "bored" with.
As far as hw goes, she said that she was open to him doing something different if he wanted to explore something in more depth. My first thought was "FANTASTIC", but then she said that of course, there are still those things that he'd have to do because they're a requirement. DS just isn't going to do more work if he still has to do even most of everything else. I believe she means well, but I'm not sure that she understands the lack of motivation DS has. She's aware that he learns/retains information quickly, but that he doesn't seem to go in depth with anything and she thought that might be something of interest to him - a project of some type. It might be, if that's all he had to do or it was in place of the other stuff - which doesn't seem would happen.
I'm just frustrated because I don't want DS to be a classroom problem, but I can't say as I'd be any different in the same situation. We're planning on HSing next year, but he's got to make it through this year first.
Any ideas? Leave it alone? Different perspective? I'm just not sure what to do to help him and the teacher. Thanks for reading, if you got this far.
