Teachers: save 70% with code TEACH70

Claim deal!

SEL in Florida 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 Florida, 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.

Florida SEL at a Glance

Florida officially frames social-emotional skill-building through Resiliency Education and Character Education (under Florida Statutes § 1003.42 and Florida Administrative Code Rule 6A-1.094124).

Official Framework & Core Terminology

Framework Name: Florida Resiliency Education Standards & Character Education Framework.
Structure & Terminology: Governed by Florida Statutes § 1003.42 and FAC Rule 6A-1.094124. Florida combines Civic, Character, and Life Skills Education into Resiliency Education. The state identifies 11 core Resiliency Characteristics (e.g., Self-Awareness & Self-Management, Empathy, Responsibility, Critical Thinking & Problem Solving, Mentorship, Citizenship, Honesty, Grit, Gratitude).

Grade Ranges & High School Applicability

Grade Bands: K–12 developmental continuum. For Grades 6–12, FAC Rule 6A-1.094124 mandates a minimum of 5 hours of data-driven instruction annually covering resiliency, character education, life skills, and mental health awareness.
High School Relevance: For high schoolers (Grades 9–12), Florida standards emphasize navigating adversity, personal accountability, suicide/substance abuse prevention, leadership, interpersonal skills, and post-secondary decision-making.

Core Resiliency Strands Overview

  1. Self-Awareness & Self-Management: Recognizing internal emotional states, developing identity, setting goals, managing stress, and applying self-control.
  2. Empathy & Peer Support: Understanding others' experiences, showing compassion, and supporting peers through adversity.
  3. Responsibility & Responsible Decision-Making: Taking ownership of actions, evaluating consequences, applying critical thinking, and practicing ethical problem-solving.
  4. Perseverance, Grit & Gratitude: Adapting through difficulty, maintaining long-term effort, and recognizing positive protective factors.
  5. Mentorship, Citizenship & Interpersonal Skills: Developing constructive relationships, leadership, active listening, and contributing positively to the community.

Educator Mandate: State Explanation & Interpretation

Under Florida Rule 6A-1.094124, public school districts must annually submit an implementation plan demonstrating how they deliver 5 hours of required resiliency instruction in secondary grades. The FLDOE explicitly interprets resiliency education as a health-aligned, protective approach designed to build confidence, reframe mental health stigma, and equip students with practical life skills, not as a subjective grading mechanism or political framework.

High School Resiliency Breakdown for Neurodivergent Learners

1. Self-Awareness & Self-Management

  • What the State Identifies: Developing self-awareness, emotional recognition, stress management, self-control, and goal setting.
  • What This Looks Like in High School: Managing academic workloads, coping with sensory overload in crowded halls/cafeterias, and self-regulating during state assessments.
  • Neurodivergent Teaching Considerations: High school Autistic and ADHD students frequently experience alexithymia (difficulty naming emotions) or delayed interoceptive awareness. Expecting immediate cognitive emotional reflection without first teaching bodily awareness skips a vital physiological step.
  • Communication Considerations: Use non-verbal check-ins, visual body scales, or digital mood maps rather than requiring immediate, on-the-spot verbal labeling of feelings.

2. Empathy & Peer Support

  • What the State Identifies: Developing empathy, recognizing peer distress, showing compassion, and supporting friends through adversity.
  • What This Looks Like in High School: Partnering on group projects, supporting a peer facing academic stress, and respecting diverse learning needs.
  • Neurodivergent Teaching Considerations: Apply Damian Milton's Double Empathy Problem. Communication breakdowns between neurotypical and neurodivergent teens stem from mutual differences in communication styles, not a lack of empathy or caring on the neurodivergent student's part.
  • Communication Considerations: Frame perspective-taking as a bi-directional skill. Explain neurotypical social expectations as objective context to navigate while validating neurodivergent communication styles.

3. Responsibility & Responsible Decision-Making

  • What the State Identifies: Taking ownership of personal actions, applying critical thinking, problem-solving, and evaluating choices and consequences.
  • What This Looks Like in High School: Evaluating choices regarding academic accommodations, managing post-secondary planning, and self-advocating when facing academic roadblocks.
  • Neurodivergent Teaching Considerations: Executive dysfunction (working memory limitations, initiation barriers) can cause decision fatigue under stress. Structured decision-making templates remove cognitive barriers to effective action.
  • Communication Considerations: Frame self-advocacy as a primary act of personal responsibility. Provide pre-formatted email scripts and choice matrices so students can request accommodations with minimal social friction.

4. Perseverance & Stress Regulation (Grit & Resiliency)

  • What the State Identifies: Demonstrating perseverance through difficulty, adapting to setbacks, and reframing challenges.
  • What This Looks Like in High School: Managing long-term research papers, recovering from sensory overload, and adapting to schedule changes.
  • Neurodivergent Teaching Considerations: Perseverance is often hampered by sensory burnout or executive function fatigue. Pushing through sensory distress without accommodations leads to meltdowns/shutdowns, not "grit."divergent traits to blend in) causes extreme mental fatigue. Collaboration goals should prioritize authentic communication and mutual clarity over neurotypical behavioral conformity.
  • Communication Considerations: Offer predictable visual schedules and pre-arranged sensory recovery passes so students can restore physiological equilibrium and persevere effectively.

5. Interpersonal Skills, Citizenship & Mentorship

  • What the State Identifies: Demonstrating interpersonal skills, leadership, collaboration, clear communication, and positive community contribution.
  • What This Looks Like in High School: Collaborating in lab teams, participating in clubs/extracurriculars, and communicating effectively with teachers and mentors.
  • Neurodivergent Teaching Considerations: Masking (suppressing natural neurodivergent traits to fit in) causes severe mental health fatigue. Focus interpersonal goals on clear, authentic communication and mutual respect rather than forcing neurotypical social behaviors.
  • Communication Considerations: Explicitly teach paralinguistics (decoding vocal pitch, cadence, volume, and body posture) as objective communication channels. Never demand forced eye contact or suppress natural self-regulatory movements (stimming).

Neurodivergent Interpretation of Florida Resiliency Education

Florida’s framework centers on building student resiliency, character, and mental health protective factors. For neurodivergent high schoolers, true resiliency begins with internal physiological awareness (interoception) and understanding non-verbal communication channels (paralinguistics) in context. Building grit and self-management requires empowering students to recognize internal stress cues and advocate for their needs without forcing neurotypical masking.
To align Florida's Resiliency Education mandate 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 Regulation in High School Health/Resiliency Units (Self-Awareness & Self-Management)

  • Scenario: A 10th-grade Autistic student experiences intense anxiety and sensory overload in crowded physical education labs, leading to unexpected class departures.
  • SEL Strategy: Fulfilling Florida's 5-hour resiliency requirement, the teacher guides the student to use an interoception check-in log (identifying physiological stress markers like elevated heart rate or muscle clenching). The student uses a pre-arranged pass to move to a quiet media center space for 5 minutes before sensory overload triggers a shutdown.

Example 2: Paralinguistic Decoding in Group Work (Interpersonal Skills & Mentorship)

  • Scenario: An 11th-grade ADHD student in a social studies discussion speaks rapidly and loudly when enthusiastic, which group members misinterpret as aggressive or dominant.
  • SEL Strategy: Supporting Florida's interpersonal skill standards, the teacher delivers a mini-lesson on paralinguistics (how pitch, volume, and pacing alter message delivery). The group establishes visual communication cues to help all members monitor speech rate and volume without singling out the neurodivergent student.

Example 3: Self-Advocacy Matrix for Post-Secondary Preparation (Responsibility & Decision-Making)

  • Scenario: A 12th-grade student with executive function challenges struggles to request extended deadlines on capstone research projects, risking graduation credits.
  • SEL Strategy: Aligned with Florida's responsible decision-making indicators, the student uses a 3-step self-advocacy matrix: (1) Identify the project roadblock 48 hours early, (2) Select an approved IEP/504 accommodation option, and (3) Utilize a structured email template to send the request to the teacher.

State-Specific FAQs

Are high schools in Florida legally required to teach social-emotional learning?

  • Florida law does not mandate a framework explicitly titled "Social and Emotional Learning." However, Florida Statute § 1003.42 and FAC Rule 6A-1.094124 legally mandate that public high schools provide a minimum of 5 hours of annual instruction in Resiliency Education, Civic and Character Education, and Life Skills for grades 6–12.

How does Florida Resiliency Education accommodate neurodivergent students with IEPs or 504 Plans?

  • Florida's Resiliency Education standards are designed as flexible skill-building targets. For students with IEPs or 504 Plans, accommodations, such as modified communication formats, sensory recovery passes, or visual decision templates, serve as the necessary access points for students to build resiliency without being penalized for neurodivergent differences.

Are Florida Resiliency Education standards graded on report cards?

  • No. Florida's mandated 5 hours of resiliency instruction focus on skill-building, mental health awareness, and character development. The FLDOE does not mandate summative report card letter grades for resiliency competencies.
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