Community Spotlight: Joe Stanewick
June 5, 2026
Joe Stanewick is one of our most experienced woodworking instructors and the creator of our beloved Basic Box Class curriculum. He has supported the Eliot School through many changes and fluctuations over the years and remains one of our most dedicated community members.
After seeing and feeling the positive effect creating with your own hands can have on students, Joe started the Stanewick Family Scholarship to help more students be able to take the Eliot School classes he teaches.
He still regularly teaches Basic Box Classes and Woodworking Open Shops. He is currently off for the summer, but check back when registration opens on Wednesday, June 17 at 12 noon to see his classes this fall!
We sat down with Joe for this month’s Community Spotlight to discuss how the school has evolved over his 40+ years with us, and what keeps him coming back year after year.
Transcript
I am Joe Stanewick, and I've been a student/teacher here for the past 42 years.
What medium do you work in?
Woodworking!
Would you say that's your favorite artistic medium?
It's my only artistic medium. In early 1984, I took a woodworking course at Wentworth Institute, right here in Boston, and it was terrific. It went from soup to nuts with the craft. I wanted to keep it up, and not having equipment and tools and a shop at home, my next door neighbor had a son that was coming here on Saturday mornings to take woodworking, so they said, ‘Why don't you go over to the Eliot School and check it out?’
One Saturday morning in early fall, I came over and met Charlie Sandler, who was the director, the custodian, the woodworking teacher. He was the school. Lo and behold, he became my mentor. So, I told him what I was interested in, and he said, ‘Thursday night we have this open workshop. Why don’t you sign up and come in here and you can do your thing?’
Then, when I retired from the corporate world at the end of 2002, Charlie said to me, ‘Would you like to come and teach kids woodworking?’ I told Charlie that I'd much rather work with adults, but I'm not qualified for it. And he said, ‘Well, come in with me on Thursday night and we'll do it together.’ I said, ‘You sure?’ He said, ‘Absolutely!’ That's the way Charlie was.
The years I taught with Charlie and various other instructors in the open workshop, I noticed a need. Students were coming into open workshop wanting to learn woodworking, very enthusiastic, interested, but no background. They got frustrated. As an instructor, I was frustrated.
I went to Abigail, who happened to be our new director at the time. I said I wanted to do an introductory workshop, curriculum-based, that we can get students into, and then they can segue into the open workshop. Abigail, true to form, said to me, ‘Do it!’ That was about 20 years ago. Now, if I had a dollar for every student that's gone through [basic box] over these past 20 years, I'd be sitting pretty.
What would you say is your favorite part of teaching woodworking?
The aha moment when a student says, ‘I got it! You took the mystery out of it. This is super.’ That's key. That's immediate feedback that I love. I learn as much from them as they hopefully learn from me. So here I am, 42 years later, still teaching and enjoying every minute of it.
A lot has changed in the 42 years I've been here, a lot. I think the catalyst for that change was Abigail Norman. She was the first full-time director of the school. Up until then it was part-time gigs. Things went along okay, but there was no growth. But when Abigail came in and took over, the growth was exponential.
What kept you involved this whole time?
Oh, just the love of the craft. A love of teaching, primarily. And just a love of the school. There’s nothing like it that I've ever heard of, anywhere.