JEC Newsletter to Members

What’s been happening

Dear SBTCA Members,

Your JEC has been hard at work improving communications, marketing and organizing our programs to best serve the furthering of the education for the Stafford to AKC judges. As you know, all of our materials are available for free viewing and downloading from the club website. These files are updated as needed as we improve our knowledge base.

We have several new files and videos now available, including an updated Breed Seminar and comprehensive Mentor Packets and we are currently about 85% complete with a new Illustrated Breed Standard. Thank you to Lorelei Craig for donating her valuable time to assist with the JEC projects.

We have several more educational videos currently in production as well. If you are a photographer or videographer and would like to help contribute to our projects please contact us at judgesed@sbtca.com. Our next big project for 2025 will be completion of the AKC Staffordshire Bull Terrier Canine College.

Our club approved new materials are superbly illustrated mainly by Maurizio Molinari of Milan, Italy. We are quite lucky to have his talents serve SBTCA and the Stafford. Your JEC also sends a monthly newsletter to Judges which contains the aforementioned projects broken down into bite-sized chunks of easily digested information. The feedback we are getting from judges and from Stafford enthusiasts around the world  has been quite encouraging and all positive.

We are very excited to welcome three new SBTCA Club Approved Ringside Mentors to our knowledge base. Please join us in welcoming and thanking Jodie Berry, Brenda Holmen and Mark Darwish. Each of them have completed the dedicated process to become a part of our club team of mentors. They have completed the seminar, AKC testing, read, signed and agreed to follow the SBTCA JEC Ethics and Guidelines and they have also completed and passed the SBTCA JEC Ethics and Guidelines exam. Each has also sat with other mentors in training sessions at shows to test their knowledge of “How to be an effective mentor”. All SBTCA Club Approved mentors are expected to follow the same program and protocols to ensure we as a club are providing comprehensive, cohesive and complimentary training with their own experience added. Mentors are not expected to discuss their opinions, their breeding or show history or fault judge. They are expected to mentor using our club materials and the Breed Standard only. We also have several other applicants who are in the process of being trained to join the mentoring team.

We have created a new SBTCA JEC Facebook page dedicated to all the above and will be adding to it over time. The page is an informational only addition to the club website page and is not another debates page as there are plenty of those already. We hope that you, and any judges interested in learning more about the Stafford will follow.

Thank you to all those who volunteered their time on the JEC before me setting the high standard of excellence so that the current committee has materials to stand upon and milestones to reach because of your hard work. Thank you as well to this wonderful current committee. While each of us has a different background and varying opinions, we all are working together very well following procedures and are excited to continue moving forward.

When you see the SBTCA JEC logo (seen in the footer of this email) you will recognize the materials as being Club Approved. This makes it easy to have consistency in educational materials so that those learning the breed will be able to cross-reference with other club approved material and know that the club has written the materials and are also keeping it up to date. This logo will appear on all official SBTCA educational materials and websites.

If any club member would like to offer constructive feedback, write articles, or be involved in any way please reach out to any member of this committee or write to judgesed@sbtca.com.

Thank you for your support,

Lynn Caswell (Chair 2023/2025)
Kimberly Washington
Dean Burwell
Sandra Carter
Judy Heller
Kate Holmen (Administrative Assistant)
Lorelei Craig (Production Assistant, Public Ed Chair)

Please find all JEC materials available for free download on the JEC page on our SBTCA website.