The first edition of Critical Incidents in School Counseling (Calia & Corsini, 1973) was published the year the United States began withdrawing troops from Vietnam, the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed state bans on abortion (Roe v. Wade), the World Trade Center opened in New York, the Watergate scandal extended to the White House, and an oil crisis caused gas rationing across North America. In the realm of education, Section 504 of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act was implemented as the first civil rights statute designed to prohibit discrimination against individuals with disabilities. The U.S. Supreme Court ruling in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, however, set the stage for decades of inequity in school financing and subsequent educational quality. School counselors reading articles in the journal School Counselor found titles such as “Youth and the Occult” (Grey, 1973), “Career Education: The Counselor’s Role” (Brown, Feit, & Forestandi, 1973), “Integration Is More Than Just Busing” (Weinrach, 1973), and “Hand Scheduling Versus the Computer” (Marlette, 1973). Sample topics in Calia and Corsini’s text included the following: unwanted teen pregnancy; race relations; discerning mental illness, narcolepsy, or school phobia; cultural conflicts between school and family; the school counselor’s role in the promotion of college; trade vs. college degree; how to handle a discrepancy between parents’ perception of their child and the child’s poor performance as a student; and ethical dilemmas regarding school confidentiality, school policies, and/or the law.

The purpose of the first edition of the text was to offer to school counselors, and school counselors in training, what textbooks did not; to meet the authentic needs of school counselors by providing a “practical” opportunity for learning. By presenting cases (critical incidents) and subsequent responses by expert consultants, the editors hoped to bridge the gap between theory and professional practice.

This original intent is consistent in the second edition, and now the third edition. Although the training for school counselors has improved dramatically over the years and the profession now has better guides to professional practice, including a code of ethics (American School Counselor Association [ASCA], 2016) first published in 1984 and a national model for comprehensive school counseling programs (ASCA, 2012a), the need to help professional school counselors learn to critically reason through a wide array of specific incidents in unique professional contexts remains.

Obviously, the current world is very different than the one in 1973 or even 2000. In 1973, there were no mobile phones, personal computers, or the internet. Even since 2000, the explosion of social media seems to have created a different reality for youth. In 2000, just 6% of kids indicated they had been a victim of cyberbullying (Finkelhor, Mitchell, & Wolak, 2000), but by 2004, the number had risen to 42% (Wolak, Mitchell, & Finkelhor, 2006). Surprisingly, although the culture of today’s youth may seem vastly different from that in 1973 or 2000, the critical incidents that concern school counselors seem surprisingly similar. The third edition of Critical Incidents in School Counseling includes themes that are similar to those in the previous editions: ethical questions, gangs, drug use, academic motivation, angry parents/families, and situations that don’t seem to easily lie within the topics addressed by school counseling textbooks.

Many of the elements of this edition are also consistent with those of previous editions. Each critical incident is approximately the same length as in the previous editions; and, similarly, each response is equivalent in length to the responses published in the previous two editions.

Tarrell Awe Agahe Portman, PhD, is the dean of the College of Education at Winona State University. She is a licensed school counselor, mental health counselor, and teacher, with over 35 years in education. She was one of two school counselor educators appointed to sit on the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards School Counseling Standards development committee. Dr. Portman has served the profession as president of the Association for Counselor Education and Supervision and president of the Association for Multicultural Counseling and Development. She has received numerous awards and recognitions over her career and was the first recipient of the Mary Smith Arnold Anti-Oppression Award from the Counselors for Social Justice division of ACA. Her research and publications focus upon school counseling and counseling issues among American Indians. She has served on editorial boards for the Professional School Counseling, Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development, and The Journal of Humanistic Counseling.

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Chris Wood, PhD, is an associate professor in the Counselor Education program at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Dr. Wood has previous experience as a high school counselor, a counseling/guidance department chair, a counselor/group leader at a residential youth facility for troubled teens, and a career counselor at an alternative school serving grades 7–12. Dr. Wood was the editor for the journal Professional School Counseling for 6 years. Dr. Wood has been the principal investigator or faculty research associate on research teams that were awarded over $3 million in state and federal grants. He has had over 30 conference presentations and 30 publications, including articles in Professional School Counseling, the Journal of Counseling & Development, the Journal of College Counseling, Counselor Education and Supervision, Career Planning and Adult Development Journal, and The Elementary School Journal. Chris Wood was coeditor for the fifth and sixth editions of the National Career Development Association publication, A Counselor’s Guide to Career Assessment Instruments. Dr. Wood was honored with the American Counseling Association Fellow Award in 2017.

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Heather J. Fye, PhD, is an assistant professor at the University of Alabama. She is a certified K–12 school counselor and licensed professional counselor. Dr. Fye has worked in the mental health and school settings for 13 years. She has previously worked in child protective services, at a nursing home, in the elementary school setting, at an outpatient counseling clinic serving youth and their families, and at a college counseling center. Her research, publications, and presentations primarily focus on school counselor wellness, stress, coping, burnout, creativity in counseling, and implementation of the American School Counselor Association National Model. She has over 30 professional presentations on these topics and has been published in the Journal of Counseling & Development, Measurement and Evaluation in Counseling and Development, and Professional School Counseling. Dr. Fye and her colleagues were awarded the Association for Assessment and Research in Counseling MECD Patricia B. Elmore Award for Outstanding Research in Measurement and Evaluation in Counseling and Development in 2015 and the American Counseling Association Research Award in 2016 for their research on school counselor burnout.

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