Teachers: save 70% with code TEACH70

Claim deal!

Ohio SEL for Neurodivergent High School Students: A Teacher's Guide

Social-emotional learning (SEL) can support students as they develop self-awareness, navigate relationships, respond to challenges, understand different perspectives, and make decisions in school and beyond.
For educators supporting neurodivergent high-school students in Ohio, understanding the state's own SEL framework can provide a useful starting point, but a state standard or competency does not automatically explain how that learning goal may look for every student.
This guide explores Ohio's approach to SEL, its relevance to high-school students, and practical considerations for supporting neurodivergent learners.

Ohio SEL at a Glance

Ohio addresses social-emotional skill building through Ohio's K–12 Social and Emotional Learning Standards, adopted by the State Board of Education in 2019 as part of the state's strategic plan to support the "Whole Child."

Official Framework & Core Terminology

Framework Name: Ohio’s K–12 Social and Emotional Learning Standards.
Structure & Terminology:
Organized into 5 Competencies, which are further divided into Standards, Benchmarks, and grade-band Performance Indicators. Key state terminology includes Whole Child Framework, Competency, Benchmark, Performance Indicator, and Student Wellness and Success.

Grade Ranges & High School Applicability

High School Relevance: PreK–12 continuum across five grade bands: K–2, 3–5, 6–8, Early High School (Grades 9–10), and Late High School (Grades 11–12).
Grade Bands: The high school grade band focuses on adult readiness, post-secondary transition planning, navigating complex social and professional environments, developing individual agency, and managing severe stress and life demands.

Core Competencies Overview

  • Self-Awareness: Understanding personal emotions, values, strengths, and limitations.
  • Self-Management: Regulating emotions, setting personal and academic goals, and managing stress.
  • Social Awareness: Demonstrating empathy, understanding diverse perspectives, and recognizing social cues and systemic contexts.
  • Relationship Skills: Establishing and maintaining positive relationships, communicating clearly, and resolving conflict constructively.
  • Responsible Decision-Making: Making ethical, constructive choices regarding personal behavior and social interactions.

Educator Mandate: State Explanation & Interpretation

The Ohio Department of Education and Workforce (ODEW) presents its SEL standards as a voluntary, guiding framework for local school districts. Ohio explicitly instructs educators to infuse SEL skills directly into academic content, Career Technical Education (CTE), Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS), and school wellness programs rather than treating SEL as an isolated subject. The state emphasizes that the standards are developmental targets for fostering a positive school climate, not punitive criteria or subjective behavioral grading rubrics.

High School Competency Breakdown for Neurodivergent Learners

1. Self-Awareness

  • What the State Identifies: Recognizing emotions, identifying personal strengths and limitations, and understanding how personal values impact behavior.
  • What This Looks Like in High School: Evaluating individual learning preferences, recognizing personal sensory triggers, and understanding one's neurodivergent profile during post-secondary transition planning.
  • Neurodivergent Teaching Considerations: High school Autistic and ADHD students frequently experience alexithymia or delayed interoceptive awareness. Expecting reflection on emotional states without first addressing internal physiological sensations skips a necessary developmental step.
  • Communication Considerations: Use non-verbal check-ins, rating scales, or visual body maps rather than requiring immediate, on-the-spot verbal emotional identification.

2: Self-Management

  • What the State Identifies: Regulating stress, managing impulses, demonstrating perseverance, and setting academic and personal goals.
  • What This Looks Like in High School: Managing complex high school schedules, navigating noisy vocational labs or auditoriums, and maintaining progress on long-term projects.
  • Neurodivergent Teaching Considerations: Executive dysfunction (working memory, task initiation barriers) and sensory processing differences heavily impact self-management. Do not misinterpret executive burnout or sensory overload as willful non-compliance or laziness.
  • Communication Considerations: Provide predictable visual schedules, pre-arranged sensory recovery passes, and structured transition supports rather than relying solely on abstract "self-control" prompts.

3. Social Awareness

  • What the State Identifies: Empathizing with others, understanding diverse perspectives, and recognizing community norms and resources.
  • What This Looks Like in High School: Collaborating in academic and vocational teams, recognizing differing communication styles, and navigating diverse peer groups.
  • Neurodivergent Teaching Considerations: Apply Damian Milton's Double Empathy Problem. Social friction is often a bi-directional mismatch in communication styles between neurodivergent and neurotypical individuals, not a one-sided empathy deficit.
  • Communication Considerations: Frame social norms as explicit, objective context to navigate rather than moral requirements. Validate authentic neurodivergent interaction styles while providing practical decoding tools.

4. Relationship Skills

  • What the State Identifies: Communicating effectively, building supportive relationships, negotiating conflict, and seeking help when needed.
  • What This Looks Like in High School: Partnering on group assignments, asserting personal accommodation needs with teachers, and establishing boundaries with peers.
  • Neurodivergent Teaching Considerations: Masking (suppressing natural neurodivergent traits to fit in) leads to extreme mental exhaustion. Relationship goals should prioritize authentic communication and mutual respect over neurotypical behavioral conformity.
  • Communication Considerations: Explicitly teach paralinguistics (decoding vocal pitch, speed, volume, and posture) as objective context signals. Never demand forced eye contact or suppress natural self-regulatory movements (stimming).

5. Responsible Decision-Making

  • What the State Identifies: Evaluating choices considering safety, ethics, and well-being, and identifying solutions to personal and social problems.
  • What This Looks Like in High School: Making decisions regarding academic accommodations, managing post-secondary planning, and evaluating social choices.
  • Neurodivergent Teaching Considerations: High stress and cognitive overload can cause decision fatigue and working memory breakdown in neurodivergent teens. Structured decision-making templates eliminate executive function barriers.
  • Communication Considerations: Frame self-advocacy as a core decision-making skill. Provide choice matrices and email templates so students can request accommodations from instructors with minimal social friction.

Neurodivergent Interpretation of Ohio SEL

Ohio's SEL standards emphasize supporting the "Whole Child" and preparing students for long-term success. For neurodivergent high schoolers, supporting the whole child requires affirming neurodiversity as a natural human variation rather than forcing behavioral masking. Developing genuine self-management and interpersonal skills requires teaching internal bodily awareness (interoception) and objective communication channels (paralinguistics) in context.
To align Ohio's Whole Child and SEL goals with practical neurodivergent instruction, explore the Neurodivergent Social & Emotional Learning (SEL) Course curriculum, designed to teach internal body regulation and authentic communication without forcing masking.

Applying SEL in Practice: High School Classroom Examples

Example 1: Interoception & Stress Management in Career-Tech / Vocational Labs (Self-Management)(Goal 1 / Self-Management)

  • Scenario: A 10th-grade Autistic student in a Career-Technical Education (CTE) engineering lab experiences intense sensory overload from machinery noise and fluorescent lighting, leading to task shutdown.
  • SEL Strategy: Aligned with Ohio Self-Management benchmarks, the teacher helps the student track physiological stress markers (e.g., elevated heart rate, muscle clenching). The student uses a pre-approved pass to move to a quiet resource area for 5 minutes to reset before safely resuming lab activities.

Example 2: Paralinguistic Decoding in Academic Seminars (Relationship Skills)

  • Scenario: An 11th-grade ADHD student in an English literature discussion speaks rapidly with loud volume when excited, which peers misinterpret as dominant or disruptive.
  • SEL Strategy: Supporting Ohio Relationship Skills benchmarks, the teacher delivers a mini-lesson on paralinguistics (how pitch, volume, and pacing alter message delivery). The discussion group adopts an objective communication checklist to evaluate ideas based on content rather than vocal inflection.

Example 3: Self-Advocacy Matrix for Graduation & Post-Secondary Transitions (Responsible Decision-Making)

  • Scenario: A 12th-grade student with executive function challenges struggles to request extended deadlines on capstone projects, risking graduation progress.
  • SEL Strategy: Grounded in Ohio Decision-Making benchmarks, the student uses a 3-step self-advocacy framework: (1) Identify the project roadblock 48 hours early, (2) Select an approved accommodation option, and (3) Send a structured email template to request accommodations from the teacher.

State-Specific FAQs

Are high schools in Ohio legally required to teach SEL?

  • No. While the State Board of Education adopted Ohio's K–12 SEL Standards in 2019, local adoption and implementation are determined at the school district level. However, ODEW strongly encourages districts to integrate SEL standards through Student Wellness and Success funding and Whole Child initiatives.

How do Ohio SEL standards adapt for neurodivergent students with IEPs or 504 Plans?

  • Ohio SEL standards are flexible developmental targets. For students with IEPs or 504 Plans, accommodations, such as modified communication channels, sensory recovery passes, or visual decision matrices serve as the necessary access points to demonstrate competency without being penalized for neurodivergent processing differences.

Should Ohio high schools assign report card grades for SEL standards?

  • No. ODEW explicitly treats the SEL standards as developmental guidelines to support instructional design, school climate, and individual reflection, not as content for summative letter grading or punitive tracking.
Go Deeper

Want to explore these communication skills further?

SpeechScape’s Neurodivergent SEL course provides a practical way to explore the communication skills behind SEL, including tone, facial expressions, emotional awareness, and social context. With structured lessons and real-world audio examples, it can complement SEL teaching for neurodivergent teens and adults.
100+ audio examples | 33 topics | Lifetime access
explore the course

Understanding SEL in High School

SEL does not end in elementary school.
For high school students, social and emotional learning may intersect with increasingly complex situations involving friendships, group work, classroom participation, conflict, communication with teachers, employment preparation, further education, and greater independence.
For neurodivergent students, these situations can involve communication and social demands that are not always obvious.
A student may:
  • understand a literal message but not an implied one
  • find tone of voice difficult to interpret
  • communicate differently from peers
  • need more explicit information about an interaction
  • find it difficult to recognize or describe changing internal states
  • communicate less effectively when stressed
  • need alternative ways to participate
These differences do not automatically represent a lack of social or emotional competence.
The goal is to support students in understanding themselves, understanding different communication styles, and developing strategies and choices that are useful to them.

What Are the Core SEL Skills?

SEL is often described through five broad areas: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making. CASEL uses these as five interconnected areas of competence, although states do not all adopt the CASEL framework or terminology directly.

Self-awareness

Understanding emotions, thoughts, preferences, needs, strengths, and internal experiences.
For a neurodivergent learner, this might include recognizing communication preferences, identifying emotional or physical signals, or developing language to describe what is happening during a challenging interaction.

Self-management

Managing emotions, thoughts, and behaviors in ways that support a student's goals and circumstances.
In communication, this might involve recognizing when stress is affecting an interaction and considering whether to pause, seek clarification, use an alternative strategy, or ask for support.

Social awareness

Understanding other people's perspectives and recognizing that people may communicate, respond, or interpret situations differently.
This can include exploring tone, pacing, facial expression, body language, context, and different communication styles.

Relationship skills

Building and maintaining relationships through communication, listening, cooperation, problem-solving, boundaries, and repair after misunderstandings.

Responsible decision-making

Considering context, possible consequences, and available options when deciding how to respond.
These skills often overlap in real-world communication.

SEL and communication

Communication is one of the many ways students apply SEL skills.

SEL area

Communication connection

Self-awareness
Recognizing emotions, internal signals, communication preferences, and personal needs.
Self-management
Managing communication when stress, frustration, or strong emotions affect an interaction.
Social awareness
Interpreting tone, pacing, facial expression, body language, context, and different communication styles.
Relationship skills
Navigating conversations, misunderstandings, disagreement, collaboration, and communication repair.
Responsible decision-making
Considering possible interpretations and choosing how to respond in different situations.
For neurodivergent learners, making these communication patterns explicit can provide a practical bridge between broad SEL goals and everyday experiences.
Read more: SEL and Communication: Supporting Neurodivergent Learners

Communication Beyond the Words

Some meaning in communication comes through more than the words themselves.
Tone of voice, pitch, pacing, volume, pauses, facial expression, body language, and context can all affect how a message is interpreted.
For some neurodivergent learners, these features may be difficult to interpret or may be interpreted differently from the people around them.

Educators can explore questions such as:

  • How does the same sentence sound when the tone changes?
  • How can context change the interpretation of a message?
  • What can a student do when they are unsure what someone meant?
  • How can different communication styles coexist without assuming that one is automatically correct?

Interoception and Self-Awareness

Interoception refers broadly to awareness of signals originating within the body.
In a communication-focused learning context, discussing interoception can provide one way to explore connections among internal states, emotions, communication, and everyday experiences.
A student might notice that they are becoming tense, that their heart is beating faster, that thinking has become more difficult, or that an interaction suddenly feels uncomfortable.
Rather than assuming that a particular physical sensation always has one meaning, educators can encourage students to explore:
SpeechScape incorporates relevant interoception concepts in the context of communication and emotional awareness. It is not a sensory therapy program; rather, these concepts are used to support communication awareness and understanding of internal states in everyday situations.

Supporting Communication Without Teaching One "Correct" Way to Communicate

SEL instruction for neurodivergent students should not automatically become instruction in how to appear more neurotypical.
A student does not necessarily need to change a natural communication style simply because it differs from the style expected by another person.

Instead, educators can help students:

  • understand different communication patterns
  • recognize that communication can be interpreted differently
  • identify their own preferences and needs
  • ask for clarification
  • communicate boundaries and needs
  • repair misunderstandings
  • consider different response options
  • choose strategies that are useful in particular situations
The goal is greater understanding, flexibility, and communication choice—not compliance with a single social norm.

Practical SEL Applications for Neurodivergent High-School Students

SEL becomes more meaningful when students can connect concepts with situations they actually encounter.

Tone and meaning

Compare different ways of saying the same words and explore how tone, pacing, or volume can influence interpretation.

Communication preferences

Explore what makes communication easier or more difficult for individual students and what support they may need.

Recognizing internal signals

Identify physical or emotional changes that students associate with stress, frustration, excitement, discomfort, or other experiences.

Communication breakdowns

Discuss what students can do when they are unsure what someone meant or when someone has misunderstood them.

Relationship skills

Explore conversations, collaboration, disagreement, boundaries, perspective-taking, and communication repair.

Real-world communication

Connect learning with group projects, teacher interactions, workplace preparation, interviews, friendships, and other situations relevant to life beyond school.

Explore more SEL activities for neurodivergent students

A Practical Communication Focused SEL Resource

SpeechScape's Neurodivergent Social & Emotional Learning (SEL) Course explores communication skills that can intersect with SEL, including paralinguistic communication, tone of voice, direct and indirect language, nonverbal communication, social context, relationship skills, and interoception-related emotional awareness.
The course uses practical examples and professionally recorded audio to help learners explore not only what people say, but how communication can be expressed and interpreted.
For educators, it can provide a resource for exploring communication-related aspects of SEL with neurodivergent learners in high-school, transition, and other settings.

Explore SpeechScape's SEL Course

Speechscape logo.
We all see the world differently.
Follow on FacebookFollow on InstagramFollow on XVisit our YouTube channel
© 2026 SpeechScape. All rights reserved. 
linkedin facebook pinterest youtube rss twitter instagram facebook-blank rss-blank linkedin-blank pinterest youtube twitter instagram