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

New Jersey SEL at a Glance

New Jersey officially adopted the New Jersey Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) Competencies and Sub-Competencies in August 2017 to promote positive school climate, mental wellness, and career readiness across all public school districts.

Official Framework & Core Terminology

Framework Name: New Jersey Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) Competencies and Sub-Competencies.
Structure & Terminology: Organized into 5 Core Competencies directly adapted from CASEL, which break down into specific, detailed Sub-Competencies. Key state terminology includes Sub-Competencies, New Jersey Tiered System of Supports (NJTSS), School Climate and Culture, and Career Readiness, Life Literacies, and Key Skills.

Grade Ranges & High School Applicability

Grade Bands: PreK–12 developmental continuum.
High School Relevance: For high schoolers (13+ / Grades 9–12), New Jersey’s framework focuses on post-secondary transition planning, self-advocacy, managing complex academic and vocational stress, navigating interpersonal relationships, and fulfilling graduation requirements under the New Jersey Student Learning Standards (NJSLS).

Core Standards Overview

  1. Self-Awareness: Recognizing one's emotions, thoughts, values, personal traits, strengths, and limitations.
  2. Self-Management: Regulating emotions, thoughts, and behaviors effectively across different situations, managing stress, and setting personal/academic goals.
  3. Social Awareness: Demonstrating perspective-taking, empathy, appreciation for diversity, and respect for others across social and cultural contexts.
  4. Relationship Skills: Establishing and maintaining healthy relationships, communicating clearly, cooperating, negotiating conflict constructively, and seeking/offering help.
  5. Responsible Decision-Making: Making constructive, ethical choices regarding personal behavior and social interactions while evaluating consequences and well-being.

Educator Mandate: State Explanation & Interpretation

The New Jersey Department of Education (NJDOE) presents its SEL competencies as voluntary instructional guidelines designed to be infused directly into general academic content, career technical education (CTE), health education (NJSLS-CHPE), and district-wide climate initiatives (such as the Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights Act). The state explicitly advises educators to view SEL as a universal (Tier 1) foundation within the New Jersey Tiered System of Supports (NJTSS). NJDOE emphasizes that SEL sub-competencies are developmental benchmarks intended to support student growth, not subjective criteria for report card grading or behavioral discipline.

High School Resiliency Breakdown for Neurodivergent Learners

1. Self-Awareness

  • What the State Identifies: Recognizing emotions, identifying personal traits and strengths, understanding personal needs and values, and cultivating self-efficacy.
  • What This Looks Like in High School: Recognizing signs of sensory burnout during block scheduling, 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 naming internal emotional states) or delayed interoceptive awareness. Demanding immediate cognitive reflection on feelings without first teaching physiological body awareness skips an essential baseline processing step.
  • Communication Considerations: Use non-verbal check-ins, visual body maps, or digital mood-tracking scales rather than requiring immediate, on-the-spot verbal emotional identification.

2. Self-Management

  • What the State Identifies: Regulating emotions and impulses, managing stress, demonstrating self-discipline and motivation, setting goals, and practicing self-advocacy.
  • What This Looks Like in High School: Managing complex high school workloads, navigating noisy vocational/lab settings, and executing steps toward post-secondary independence.
  • Neurodivergent Teaching Considerations: Executive dysfunction (working memory limits, task initiation barriers) and sensory processing overload directly impair 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: Identifying verbal and physical social cues, demonstrating empathy, understanding diverse perspectives, and recognizing family, school, and community resources.
  • What This Looks Like in High School: Participating in diverse peer groups, recognizing differing communication styles in group projects, and navigating high school social environments.
  • Neurodivergent Teaching Considerations: Apply Damian Milton's Double Empathy Problem. Social breakdowns are often mutual communication mismatches 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 providing practical decoding tools.

4. Relationship Skills

  • What the State Identifies: Communicating effectively, cooperating toward group goals, managing and expressing emotions in relationships, building supportive networks, and negotiating conflict constructively.
  • What This Looks Like in High School: Partnering on group assignments, asserting personal boundaries with peers, and communicating accommodation needs to teachers and employers.ural barriers in society.
  • 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: Identifying problems, evaluating consequences, implementing problem-solving strategies, reflecting on choices, and making ethical decisions.
  • What This Looks Like in High School: Making decisions regarding academic accommodations, managing post-secondary planning, 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 templates remove cognitive barriers to effective action.
  • 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 New Jersey SEL

New Jersey’s SEL framework emphasizes creating supportive school environments and equipping students with skills for school, work, and life. For neurodivergent high schoolers, true skill development requires affirming neurodiversity as a natural form of 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 real-world contexts.
To align NJDOE’s SEL competencies 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 & Resiliency in Practice: High School Classroom Examples

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

  • Scenario: A 10th-grade Autistic student in a Career-Technical Education (CTE) shop lab experiences intense sensory overload from loud machinery and bright lighting, leading to sudden task shutdown.
  • SEL Strategy: Aligned with NJDOE Self-Management sub-competencies, the teacher helps the student track physiological stress markers (e.g., muscle clenching, elevated heart rate). The student uses a pre-arranged pass to move to a quiet library space for 5 minutes to reset before safely returning to complete lab work.

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

  • Scenario: An 11th-grade ADHD student in an AP English discussion speaks rapidly at a high volume when excited, which group members misinterpret as aggressive or dominant.
  • SEL Strategy: Supporting NJDOE Relationship Skills sub-competencies, 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 ask teachers for extended deadlines on senior capstone projects, risking graduation credits.
  • SEL Strategy: Grounded in NJDOE Decision-Making sub-competencies, 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 New Jersey legally required to teach SEL?

  • New Jersey does not mandate a standalone SEL course. However, NJDOE strongly encourages districts to integrate the state's SEL Competencies across general instruction, school climate initiatives, and the required Comprehensive Health and Physical Education standards.

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

  • NJDOE frames SEL as a foundational Tier 1 element within the New Jersey Tiered System of Supports (NJTSS). Accommodations listed in an IEP or 504 plan, such as visual decision templates, sensory passes, or modified communication options, serve as essential access points that allow neurodivergent students to demonstrate competence without penalty.

Should New Jersey high schools assign report card grades for SEL sub-competencies?

  • No. NJDOE explicitly treats the SEL competencies and sub-competencies as developmental guidelines to support instructional design, safe school climate, and student self-reflection, not as criteria for summative report card grading.
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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