AROUND CAMPUS
Hands-On Administrator Assumes Lower School Leadership By Kathleen Thomas Todd Stansbery calls boys at home to wish them a happy birthday and follows up with cards. He usually sits with students during lunch to talk and get to know them. This selfdescribed “hands-on guy” seeks for students to know and trust him and have confidence that he cares. Now in his 32nd year teaching in independent schools, the former head of Tuxedo Park School in New York is grateful for new challenges in working with all boys. The energetic, enthusiastic educator is working through the transition from associate head to head when Assistant Head of School Sarah Mansfield, who filled in last year during a nationwide search, hands over the reins later this year. As a former science teacher, Stansbery seeks to enhance sciences so that students develop a love for nature. He would like to coordinate with other divisions for greater student engagement. His office shelves include a collection of bones found hiking, including the lower jaw of a sea turtle and a black bear skull he cut with his pocket knife from the furry corpse still intact in a frigid stream. He cites some career highlights as outside adventures with students, such as hikes on the Appalachian Trail, Chincoteague Island and Calvert Cliffs in the Northern Neck, where Africa and North America once connected. He’s even chaperoned trips to Disney World where students explored lessons in science, such as the physics of roller coasters. 16 | StC Magazine
