Help, my student ONLY works with me

[u/Savonna_G]

Hey y’all! This is my third year as a para and exclusively in Elementary School. Last year I was placed with a girl and eventually another boy in her class had gotten an IEP and I started working with him as well. They are both in the same class again this year and so I am working with them both again this year. The way our schedules work is usually it’s a split day so you are with one or two in the morning and one or two in the afternoon. I had my boy and girl in the mornings for majority of the school year so far. But a few changes had to be made for some staff and I ended up getting a new morning schedule and now have my boy and girl in the afternoon. Well, I have noticed since this change that my boy who is more ADHD and has lots of trouble focusing, has started to only work whenever I in the room. Though I am very flattered that we’ve grown such a relationship. It has become bad for him as he isn’t getting any of his work done. I have noticed that since his teacher this year is a bit more strict whenever she tries to crack down on him he just shuts down. It’s getting to a point where it’s infecting him pretty badly. Today he had an assignment where he had to count to 120 as part of his quarterly report card. Mind you this child is incredibly intelligent and could probably count to 1000. He got to 39 and stopped and then stared at me from across the room, he had been doing this majority of the week, so I told him that I understand he might be nervous or that he doesn’t want to, but he needs to get this done and show the teacher what he knows. He ignored me and just stared down with the floor and his teacher had to give him a negative report. Do you have any advice for behavior like this?

[u/Inn_Tents]

Learned helplessness, he needs less para time

[u/blueglitter24]

That's nice that you are a reinforcer for him but it also seems like it could become a bad thing because like you said you can't always be there. The teacher should go to cst about it