Teachers: save 70% with code TEACH70

Claim deal!

SEL in North Carolina 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.
However, states do not all have a dedicated statewide SEL standards framework.
For educators in North Carolina, understanding what the state does and does not provide can be a useful starting point. This guide identifies relevant state guidance, frameworks, competencies, or related education resources and considers what they may mean for supporting neurodivergent high school students.

North Carolina SEL at a Glance

The North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (NCDPI) integrates social-emotional learning directly into the North Carolina Standard Course of Study (NCSCOS) and the state's Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS) framework, supported by state School Mental Health Policy (Session Law 2020-7 / Policy SHLT-003).

Official Framework & Core Terminology

Official Framework Name: NC Social and Emotional Learning (NC SEL) & NCSCOS SEL Alignment.
Structure & Terminology: Built on CASEL’s 5 core competencies crosswalked directly into content-area standards within the North Carolina Standard Course of Study (NCSCOS). Key state terminology includes NCSCOS SEL Mapping, Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS), Whole Child, School Mental Health Policy, and Restorative Practices.

Grade Ranges & High School Applicability

Grade Bands: PK–12 developmental continuum. High school is specifically addressed through Grades 9–12 Guidance Mapping and secondary subject-specific alignment documents (e.g., CTE 6–12, High School Science, ELA 9–12).
High School Relevance: Secondary NC SEL mapping focuses on post-secondary transition planning, developing personal agency, managing stress during life transitions, evaluating complex social and institutional structures, and establishing workforce readiness.

Core Competencies Overview

  1. Self-Awareness: Recognizing one's emotions, thoughts, values, strengths, and limitations; cultivating a well-grounded sense of confidence and purpose.
  2. Self-Management: Regulating emotions, thoughts, and behaviors effectively across diverse situations; achieving personal and collective goals.
  3. Social Awareness: Demonstrating empathy and perspective-taking for individuals from diverse backgrounds and cultures; understanding broader social norms and resources.
  4. Relationship Skills: Establishing and maintaining healthy relationships; communicating clearly, listening actively, cooperating, and resolving conflict constructively.
  5. Responsible Decision-Making: Making caring and constructive choices regarding personal behavior and social interactions across varied contexts.

Educator Mandate: State Explanation & Interpretation

NCDPI interprets SEL not as an isolated, standalone curriculum, but as a universal (Tier 1) framework embedded directly within academic instruction (NCSCOS) and district-wide MTSS implementation. Under Session Law 2020-7, North Carolina public school units maintain K–12 School Mental Health Improvement Plans, positioning SEL as a protective factor for student well-being and school safety. NCDPI explicitly instructs educators that SEL mapping is designed to guide supportive instructional practices, not to serve as a subjective behavioral grading rubric or disciplinary tool.

High School Competency Breakdown for Neurodivergent Learners

1. Self-Awareness

  • What the State Identifies: Understanding one's own emotions, thoughts, and values; recognizing personal strengths and limitations; developing self-efficacy.
  • What This Looks Like in High School: Recognizing signs of sensory and cognitive overload during high-stakes testing, evaluating personal accommodation needs, and understanding one's neurodivergent profile during IEP/504 transition planning.
  • Neurodivergent Teaching Considerations: High school Autistic and ADHD students frequently experience alexithymia (difficulty identifying internal feelings) or delayed interoceptive awareness. Expecting immediate emotional labeling without teaching internal bodily cues skips a vital physiological processing step.
  • Communication Considerations: Use non-verbal check-ins, visual body scales, or digital rating tools rather than requiring immediate, on-the-spot verbal emotional identification.

2. Self-Management

  • What the State Identifies: Managing stress, regulating impulses, demonstrating perseverance, and setting academic and personal goals.
  • What This Looks Like in High School: Managing block-scheduling workloads, coping with sensory overload in crowded halls or CTE labs, and executing steps toward long-term projects.
  • Neurodivergent Teaching Considerations: Executive dysfunction (working memory limits, task initiation inertia) and sensory processing differences heavily impact self-management. Do not misinterpret executive burnout or sensory overload as intentional laziness or non-compliance.
  • Communication Considerations: Offer 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: Demonstrating empathy, taking diverse perspectives, recognizing social and institutional contexts, and respecting individual differences.
  • What This Looks Like in High School: Participating in diverse peer groups, understanding differing communication styles in group assignments, and navigating high school social environments.
  • 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 neurodivergent empathy deficit.
  • Communication Considerations: Present social norms as explicit, contextual rules to navigate rather than moral imperatives. Validate authentic neurodivergent interaction styles while offering functional tools to decode peer dynamics.

4. Relationship Skills

  • What the State Identifies: Communicating clearly, cooperating in teams, negotiating conflict constructively, and seeking or offering help when needed.
  • What This Looks Like in High School: Partnering on group projects, asserting personal boundaries with peers, and communicating accommodation needs to teachers and employers.
  • Neurodivergent Teaching Considerations: Forced masking (suppressing natural traits to pass as neurotypical) leads to severe mental health fatigue and burnout. Relationship goals should prioritize authentic communication and mutual clarity over neurotypical conformity.
  • Communication Considerations: Explicitly teach paralinguistics (decoding vocal pitch, cadence, 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 safety, ethical standards, personal well-being, and community impact to make constructive choices.
  • What This Looks Like in High School: Making choices regarding academic accommodations, managing post-secondary planning decisions, and navigating peer dynamics ethically.
  • Neurodivergent Teaching Considerations: High stress and cognitive overload can cause decision fatigue and working memory breakdown in neurodivergent teens. Structured decision-making models 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 North Carolina SEL

North Carolina’s framework emphasizes integrating social-emotional competencies into academic content and school mental health planning. For neurodivergent high schoolers, equity and mental health protection require recognizing neurodiversity as a natural form of human variation rather than a behavioral deficit. Developing genuine self-management and interpersonal skills requires teaching internal bodily awareness (interoception) and objective communication channels (paralinguistics) in real-world contexts without requiring behavioral masking.
To align NCDPI's academic alignment goals with practical neurodivergent instruction, explore the Neurodivergent Social & Emotional Learning (SEL) Course curriculum, designed to build internal body regulation and clear communication without forcing masking.

Applying SEL in Practice: High School Classroom Examples

Example 1: Interoception & Stress Management in Secondary CTE / Science Labs (Self-Management)

  • Scenario: A 10th-grade Autistic student in a Career and Technical Education (CTE) lab experiences intense sensory overload from machinery noise and fluorescent lighting, leading to sudden task shutdown.
  • SEL Strategy: Aligned with NCDPI Self-Management competencies within CTE standards, the student tracks physiological stress markers (e.g., muscle clenching, elevated heart rate) using an interoception check-in scale. The student uses a pre-arranged accommodation pass to step into a quiet library space for 5 minutes before safely returning to complete lab work.

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

  • Scenario: An 11th-grade ADHD student in a history discussion speaks rapidly at a high volume when passionate, which group members misinterpret as aggressive or dominant.
  • SEL Strategy: Supporting NCDPI Relationship Skills mapping, the teacher delivers a mini-lesson on paralinguistics (how pitch, volume, and pacing alter message delivery). The discussion group adopts an objective communication rubric to evaluate discussion points based on content rather than vocal inflection.

Example 3: Self-Advocacy Matrix for Graduation & Transition Planning (Responsible Decision-Making)

  • Scenario: A 12th-grade student with executive function challenges struggles to ask teachers for extended deadlines on senior capstone projects, risking graduation credits.
  • SEL Strategy: Grounded in NCDPI Decision-Making mapping, the student uses a 3-step self-advocacy framework: (1) Identify the project roadblock 48 hours early, (2) Select an approved IEP/504 accommodation option, and (3) Use a structured email template to send the request to the instructor.

State-Specific FAQs

Are high schools in North Carolina legally required to teach SEL?

  • North Carolina does not require a standalone course titled "SEL." However, Session Law 2020-7 mandates that public school units adopt a School Mental Health Improvement Plan, which incorporates social-emotional instruction and mental health training into K–12 schools. NCDPI maps SEL directly into the required North Carolina Standard Course of Study (NCSCOS).

How do North Carolina SEL standards align with IEPs or 504 Plans for neurodivergent students?

  • NCDPI treats SEL mapping as a Tier 1 universal foundation within the state's Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS) framework. Accommodations listed in an IEP or 504 plan, such as visual decision templates, sensory recovery passes, or modified communication formats, serve as necessary access points to allow students to demonstrate competency without penalty.

Should North Carolina high schools assign report card grades for SEL competencies?

  • No. NCDPI explicitly intends the SEL mappings to serve as instructional guides and developmental benchmarks to support whole-child growth and positive school climate, not as criteria for summative report card letter grades.
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.

Self-management

Managing emotions, thoughts, and behaviors in ways that support a student's goals and circumstances.

Social awareness

Understanding other people's perspectives and recognizing that people may communicate, respond, or interpret situations differently.

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.

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.
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 information in a conversation is communicated through more than the words themselves.
Tone of voice, pitch, pacing, volume, pauses, facial expression, body language, and context can all influence interpretation.
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?
  • What role does context play?
  • What can a student do when they are unsure what someone meant?
  • How can different communication styles coexist?

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