Walk into Andrea Livesey’s classroom at the Joseph Lee School on Talbot Avenue, take a deep breath, let the soft music melt away anxieties, then exhale. That is what hundreds of Lee School students experience every day in the Boston Public School’s (BPS) first Social Wellness class, which was created and is being taught by Livesey, the district’s 2022-23 Teacher of the Year in the Special Education category.

Early this school year, Livesey, who has spent nine years at the Lee Pre-K-8 school teaching in a traditional special education sub-separate classroom, saw her name highlighted citywide for the work she has done focusing on the Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) strand of special education. That award, which was for her work prior to this year, was the springboard for the new social wellness pathway she has put into the district’s teaching discipline.

Down a long corridor at the expansive circa 1971 school building, visitors will find things pretty much status quo for a school building. Outside Livesey’s room are the usual hallway message boards, wall to wall institutional floor tiles, and the typical wooden classroom door. But open that door and things become more remarkable – if not relaxing for everyone.

There are no desks lined up in rows, and no test prep notes scribbled on a marker board. Instead, calming music is in the air and mood lighting is in every corner. There are tables and reading nooks – bean bags and soft “squishy” plush animals – and an air of peacefulness.

It is, Livesey said, a place where positive behaviors can increase, and anxiety and “maladjusted behaviors” can decrease. “I think every school should have a social-emotional program for kids,” she said. “They try to have teachers incorporate it into the classroom and it should be part of that, but it’s hard with data and IEPs and other concerns. Here, kids come in for 45 minutes every day. It’s separate from the classroom and focused only on social wellness.”

Livesey had shown a lot of promise in the school’s special education classrooms, but said she was burning out. “I knew I needed a change from the classroom, but I didn’t know what,” she said.

Motivated by a social-emotional educational curriculum program called ‘Breathe for Change,’ the former principal at the Lee School gave Livesey the freedom to create a new program to help children struggling to adjust. She said it has become a perfect antidote to the stress and trauma that have accompanied students in their return to classrooms after Covid-19.

She has five to six classes per day, all based on curricula she has tailored to the school, the community, and each grade level. They focus on problem solving, coping skills and being in touch with and checking one’s emotions. The classes are for general education, special education, and inclusion students, and can include quiet introspection, reading, singing, and developing social strategies.

The 36-year-old Livesey said these are the skills that so many young people missed out on during pandemic, whether in kindergarten or in grade 12. She said they missed chances to learn how better to be with other people, and the social wellness program is focused on reversing that.

“My hope is this will stay,” she said. “I think emerging from the pandemic, it’s such a need. You are here now for a full day and interacting with people in real life. You have third graders who have spent most of their schooling online and hadn’t been in a classroom since kindergarten. A class like this where they can explore themselves and how they feel is so important right now.”

Much of the work in her social wellness class is building on relationships she already had with families and students over the past decade. In fact, those relationships are what earned her the Special Education Teacher of the Year award in the first place. When she learned last November that she had been chosen, she said she was “utterly surprised.”

“I was so appreciative that someone saw the hard work and felt I deserved to be recognized,” she said. “I was so used to being in my classroom bubble doing my thing with the kids and working on relationships with families. Then it was like, ‘Bam!’…It ended up being a parent from a previous classroom who had nominated me. I taught both of their kids. That definitely made it special. Co-workers see you every day. They see your good days and your bad days, but when it comes from a parent – you realize that you are really making an impact.”

Livesey said that was the kind of impact she dreamt of when she was won over into special education teaching during a college internship that placed her with an autistic child. After growing up in Newton, she headed to Coastal Carolina University in Conway, South Carolina.

“I just fell in love with [ABA] when I was working with that autistic child,” she said. “It hooked me. I was always good with kids, but I went to school for marine science. My idea was to train dolphins…I ended up in psychology and I just loved it.”

After earning a master’s degree atUMass Boston, she landed at the Lee School. Now, though her role there is as a wellness specialist, she can’t see herself teaching anywhere else. “Some days are difficult…. but I come in to see the kids learn and try to change their day in the tiniest way, if I can,” she said. “That’s why I get out of bed. I see them as my own kids. I can’t imagine ever leaving.”