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SEL in Arizona 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 Arizona, 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.

Arizona SEL at a Glance

The Arizona Department of Education (ADE) establishes social-emotional development through the Arizona Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) Competencies, integrating CASEL’s five core domains with equity-focused elaborations, trauma-informed practices, and secondary mental health instruction mandates (SB 1376).

Official Framework & Core Terminology

Framework Name: Arizona Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) Competencies & Equity Elaborations.
Structure & Terminology: Organized around 5 Core Competencies aligned with CASEL, paired with Equity Elaborations: Identity (Self-Awareness), Agency and Efficacy (Self-Management & Relationship Skills), and Belonging and Engagement (Social Awareness & Responsible Decision-Making). Key state terminology includes Trauma-Informed SEL, Culturally Responsive Practices, and Mental Health Instruction (Health Education Standards).

Grade Ranges & High School Applicability

Grade Bands: PreK–12 developmental continuum.
High School Relevance: For high schoolers (13+ / Grades 9–12), Arizona’s framework focuses on personal agency, mental health self-care, navigating post-secondary transitions, evaluating institutional and cultural contexts, and establishing healthy peer and professional boundaries.

Core Competencies Overview

  • Self-Awareness (Identity): Recognizing emotions, personal strengths, values, challenges, and cultural identities.
  • Self-Management (Agency & Efficacy): Regulating stress, managing impulses, setting personal goals, and demonstrating perseverance.
  • Social Awareness (Belonging & Engagement): Empathizing across diverse backgrounds, taking perspectives, and recognizing social and systemic contexts.
  • Relationship Skills (Agency & Efficacy): Communicating clearly, listening actively, resolving conflict, and building supportive connections.
  • Responsible Decision-Making (Belonging & Engagement): Making ethical choices, evaluating consequences, and considering personal and community safety and well-being.

Educator Mandate: State Explanation & Interpretation

ADE presents its SEL competencies as a voluntary, flexible framework intended to be embedded within Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS), Health Education classes (SB 1376 mental health requirements), and school safety initiatives. ADE explicitly instructs educators to implement SEL using a trauma-informed, culturally responsive lens. The state emphasizes that SEL competencies are developmental skill targets designed to build supportive school climates, not tools for behavioral compliance, forced assimilation, or report card grading.

High School Competency Breakdown for Neurodivergent Learners

1. Self-Awareness (Identity)

  • What the State Identifies: Recognizing internal emotional states, identifying personal values and strengths, and affirming cultural and individual identity.
  • What This Looks Like in High School: Recognizing signs of sensory burnout during high-stakes exams, understanding personal learning preferences, and exploring one's neurodivergent profile during IEP/504 transition planning.
  • Neurodivergent Teaching Considerations: High school Autistic and ADHD students frequently experience alexithymia (difficulty naming internal feelings) or delayed interoceptive awareness. Demanding immediate emotional reflection without teaching physiological body cues bypasses essential baseline processing.
  • Communication Considerations: Use non-verbal check-ins, visual body maps, or digital rating scales rather than requiring immediate, on-the-spot verbal emotional identification.

2. Self-Management (Agency & Efficacy)

  • What the State Identifies: Applying self-regulation techniques, managing stress, demonstrating perseverance, and monitoring progress toward personal goals.
  • What This Looks Like in High School: Managing complex block schedules, handling sensory overload in crowded CTE labs or auditoriums, and sustaining focus on long-term assignments.
  • Neurodivergent Teaching Considerations: Executive dysfunction (working memory, task initiation barriers) and sensory processing differences heavily impact self-management. Do not misinterpret sensory overload or executive burnout as willful non-compliance or laziness.
  • 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 (Belonging & Engagement)

  • What the State Identifies: Taking diverse perspectives, empathizing across differences, recognizing systemic factors, and building a sense of belonging.
  • What This Looks Like in High School: Participating in diverse peer groups, understanding differing communication styles, and recognizing social dynamics in academic and career settings.
  • 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 (Agency & Efficacy)

  • What the State Identifies: Communicating constructively, collaborating in diverse teams, negotiating conflict, and asserting personal boundaries.
  • What This Looks Like in High School: Partnering on group projects, asserting boundaries with peers, and communicating accommodation needs to school staff.
  • Neurodivergent Teaching Considerations: Masking (suppressing natural traits to pass as neurotypical) leads to severe mental health fatigue and burnout. Relationship goals should prioritize authentic communication and mutual respect over neurotypical conformity.
  • Communication Considerations: Explicitly teach paralinguistics (decoding pitch, volume, speech rate, and posture) as objective context signals. Never demand forced eye contact or suppress natural self-regulatory movements (stimming).

5. Responsible Decision-Making (Belonging & Engagement)

  • What the State Identifies: Evaluating choices considering safety, ethics, personal well-being, and community impact, and solving problems systematically.
  • 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 Arizona SEL

Arizona’s SEL framework explicitly combines trauma-informed practices with equity elaborations (Identity, Agency, Belonging). For neurodivergent high schoolers, true agency and identity affirmation 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) without forcing masking.
To align ADE’s trauma-informed and SEL goals with practical neurodivergent instruction, explore the Neurodivergent Social & Emotional Learning (SEL) Course curriculum, designed to build internal body regulation and real-world communication skills without requiring masking.

Applying SEL in Practice: High School Classroom Examples

Example 1: Interoception & Stress Management in High School Health Classes (Self-Management)

  • Scenario: A 9th-grade Autistic student experiences intense physiological distress and shutdowns during high-sensory PE or health lab activities.
  • SEL Strategy: Aligned with SB 1376 health and self-management standards, the student tracks physiological stress markers (e.g., muscle tightness, shallow breathing) using an interoception check-in log. The student uses a pre-arranged pass to step into a quiet resource space for 5 minutes before returning to safely complete the lesson.

Example 2: Paralinguistic Decoding in CTE Career Seminars (Relationship Skills)

  • Scenario: An 11th-grade ADHD student in a career-technical discussion speaks rapidly at a high volume when excited, which group members misinterpret as aggressive or dominant.
  • SEL Strategy: Supporting ADE relationship skills competencies, the teacher delivers a mini-lesson on paralinguistics (how pitch, volume, and pacing alter message delivery). The group adopts an objective communication checklist to evaluate ideas based on content rather than vocal inflection.

Example 3: Self-Advocacy Matrix for 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 ADE decision-making competencies, 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 Arizona legally required to teach SEL?

  • Arizona does not mandate a standalone, isolated SEL course. However, Arizona requires health education across K–12 schools, which must include mental health instruction under SB 1376. ADE provides the SEL Competencies to help schools meet these health standards and support school safety and climate initiatives.

How do Arizona’s SEL competencies accommodate neurodivergent students with IEPs or 504 Plans?

  • ADE explicitly connects SEL with trauma-informed and equitable practices. Accommodations listed in an IEP or 504 plan, such as sensory recovery passes, visual decision templates, or modified communication options, are recognized as essential access points that allow students to build competence without penalty.

Should Arizona high schools assign report card grades for SEL competencies?

  • No. ADE treats the SEL competencies as developmental guidelines to support instructional design, safe school climates, and student self-reflection, not as criteria for summative letter 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.

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

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