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Michigan 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 Michigan, 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 Michigan's approach to SEL, its relevance to high-school students, and practical considerations for supporting neurodivergent learners.

Michigan SEL at a Glance

Michigan adopted the Michigan Early Childhood to Grade 12 Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) Competencies and Indicators in 2017, explicitly linking social-emotional development to academic success, the Whole Child model, and the Michigan Model for Health™.

Official Framework & Core Terminology

Framework Name: Michigan Early Childhood to Grade 12 Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) Competencies and Indicators.
Structure & Terminology: Organized into 5 Core Competencies aligned with CASEL, broken down into specific Indicators and grade-band Strategies. Key state terminology includes Whole Child, Michigan Model for Health™ (MMH), Educational Equity, Self-Determination, and Learner Readiness.

Grade Ranges & High School Applicability

Grade Bands: PreK–12 continuum across four developmental tiers: Early Childhood (Infant/Toddler/PreK), Elementary (K–5), Middle School (6–8), and High School (Grades 9–12).
High School Relevance: Secondary SEL indicators focus on self-determination, managing post-secondary transitions, evaluating complex interpersonal dynamics, navigating personal well-being, and demonstrating workforce readiness.

Core Competencies Overview

  • Self-Awareness: Recognizing emotions, identifying traits/strengths, evaluating external supports, and understanding personal responsibility.
  • Self-Management: Managing emotions/behaviors constructively, demonstrating integrity, and setting/evaluating life goals.
  • Social Awareness: Empathizing across diverse backgrounds, understanding social/ethical norms, and recognizing community resources.
  • Relationship Skills: Establishing healthy relationships, communicating clearly, cooperating, resisting unwanted pressure, and resolving conflicts.
  • Responsible Decision-Making: Making constructive choices based on ethics, safety, consequences, and personal/community well-being.

Educator Mandate: State Explanation & Interpretation

The Michigan Department of Education (MDE) frames SEL as a voluntary, universal (Tier 1) framework designed to foster educational equity and whole-child development. MDE explicitly emphasizes that SEL competencies are not standalone content to be taught in isolation, nor are they behavioral compliance metrics or tools for grading. Instead, they are intended to be integrated into daily academic practices, school climate initiatives, and health curricula like the Michigan Model for Health™.

High School Competency Breakdown for Neurodivergent Learners

1. Self-Awareness

  • What the State Identifies: Recognizing internal emotional states, identifying personal strengths, acknowledging external support systems, and building personal responsibility.
  • What This Looks Like in High School: Recognizing sensory/cognitive fatigue during high-stakes testing, evaluating personal accommodations, and exploring self-advocacy needs.
  • Neurodivergent Teaching Considerations: High school Autistic and ADHD students frequently experience alexithymia (difficulty identifying internal feelings) or delayed interoceptive awareness. Demanding immediate emotional reflection without first addressing physical body cues bypasses foundational processing.
  • Communication Considerations: Utilize non-verbal scales, digital check-ins, or bodily sensations tracking rather than requiring instant verbal emotional labeling.

2: Self-Management

  • What the State Identifies: Regulating emotions/behaviors, demonstrating honesty, and monitoring personal/academic progress toward long-term goals.
  • What This Looks Like in High School: Managing complex high school block schedules, handling noisy vocational/lab settings, and maintaining momentum on multi-week projects.
  • Neurodivergent Teaching Considerations: Executive dysfunction (working memory, task initiation inertia) and sensory overload heavily disrupt self-management. Do not misinterpret executive fatigue or sensory overload as intentional laziness or non-compliance.
  • Communication Considerations: Provide visual schedules, clear transition prompts, and pre-designated sensory recovery passes rather than relying on abstract prompts to "stay focused."

3. Social Awareness

  • What the State Identifies: Demonstrating empathy, taking diverse perspectives, recognizing social norms, and identifying support networks.
  • What This Looks Like in High School: Working in group settings, understanding different communication styles, and navigating high school social environments.
  • Neurodivergent Teaching Considerations: Apply Damian Milton's Double Empathy Problem. Social friction is frequently a bi-directional communication mismatch between neurotypical and neurodivergent individuals, not a one-sided deficit in empathy.
  • Communication Considerations: Frame social norms as explicit, objective context to navigate rather than moral standards. Validate authentic neurodivergent interaction styles while providing practical decoding tools.

4. Relationship Skills

  • What the State Identifies: Communicating clearly, cooperating in teams, resisting peer pressure, negotiating conflict constructively, and seeking help when needed.
  • What This Looks Like in High School: Partnering on group assignments, asserting boundaries with peers, and communicating accommodation needs to teachers.
  • Neurodivergent Teaching Considerations: Masking (forcing oneself to appear neurotypical) causes extreme mental fatigue and burnout. Relationship goals should prioritize authentic communication and mutual respect over neurotypical conformity.
  • Communication Considerations: Teach paralinguistic elements (decoding vocal pitch, cadence, volume, and body 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, social norms, and personal/community consequences to make constructive choices.
  • What This Looks Like in High School: Evaluating choices regarding academic accommodations, managing post-secondary decisions, and solving personal problems systematically.
  • Neurodivergent Teaching Considerations: High stress and cognitive overload can cause decision fatigue and working memory failure in neurodivergent teens. Structured decision-making templates eliminate executive function barriers.
  • Communication Considerations: Frame self-advocacy as a primary decision-making skill. Provide choice matrices and email templates so students can request accommodations from instructors with minimal social friction.

Neurodivergent Interpretation of Michigan SEL

Michigan's SEL framework emphasizes self-determination, equity, and whole-child health. For neurodivergent high schoolers, true self-determination requires affirming neurodiversity as a natural identity rather than forcing behavioral masking. Building authentic self-management and interpersonal skills requires teaching internal bodily awareness (interoception) and objective communication channels (paralinguistics) in real-world contexts.
To align Ohio's Whole Child and SEL goals with practical neurodiveTo align Michigan's SEL competencies with practical neurodivergent instruction, explore the Neurodivergent Social & Emotional Learning (SEL) Course curriculum, designed to build internal body awareness and clear communication without forcing masking.

Applying SEL in Practice: High School Classroom Examples

Example 1: Interoception & Self-Management in High School Labs (Self-Management)

  • Scenario: A 10th-grade Autistic student in a chemistry lab experiences sensory overload from loud ventilation systems and flickering fluorescent lighting, leading to task shutdown.
  • SEL Strategy: Aligned with MDE Self-Management indicators, the teacher guides the student to use an interoception check-in scale to identify physical stress indicators (e.g., muscle clenching, shallow breathing). The student uses a pre-arranged accommodation pass to step into a quiet library area for 5 minutes before returning to safely complete the lab.

Example 2: Paralinguistic Decoding in Group Projects (Relationship Skills)

  • Scenario: An 11th-grade ADHD student in a history seminar speaks rapidly and loudly when excited, which group members misinterpret as aggressive or dominating.
  • SEL Strategy: Supporting MDE Relationship Skills indicators, the teacher delivers a mini-lesson on paralinguistics (how pitch, speed, and volume modify message delivery). The group establishes visual cues to help all members monitor speech rate without singling out the neurodivergent student.

Example 3: Self-Advocacy Matrix for Post-Secondary Transition (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 MDE Decision-Making indicators, 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) Use a structured email template to submit the request to the teacher.

State-Specific FAQs

Are high schools in Michigan legally mandated to teach SEL?

  • No. Michigan does not have a statutory mandate requiring standalone SEL classes. However, MDE strongly encourages districts to integrate the state's SEL Competencies into general instruction, health education (Michigan Model for Health™), and local Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS).

How do Michigan SEL competencies adapt for neurodivergent students with IEPs or 504 Plans?

  • MDE treats SEL competencies as flexible, developmental skill targets. For students with IEPs or 504 Plans, accommodations, such as modified communication options, sensory breaks, or visual executive scaffolds, serve as essential access points to allow students to demonstrate growth without being penalized for neurodivergent differences.

Are Michigan high schools required to assign grades for SEL competencies?

  • No. MDE explicitly treats SEL competencies as developmental guidelines to support instructional planning, climate improvement, and student self-reflection, not as criteria for report card grading or behavioral discipline.
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

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