POTSDAM -- A personal and professional friendship among four teachers has blossomed into an educator's resource that can spur inquiry in high school classrooms, according to a press release from Clarkson University.

Catherine Snyder, chair of the Department of Education at Clarkson, was a high school teacher in 2003 when she and colleagues Mary Eads, Sean O'Connell and Richard Lasselle were pursuing ten-year National Board certification. The friends casually mentioned writing a book about the process and the idea simmered until 2013.

“It's been a really long and interesting collaboration,” said Snyder. “We maintained our friendship and the book idea resurfaced when we renewed our National Board certification in 2013. We talked more about inquiry and what we had done in the classroom. I had a sabbatical so I could get a jump on writing. I wrote the first few chapters and sent them out, and then we got a publisher.”

The Teaching with Inquiry Sourcebook can be viewed on the publisher's website at www.teachersdiscovery.com/product/25204/social-studies.

The 116-page sourcebook and CD includes a chapter on how to differentiate material for students with special learning needs, encouraging teachers to take interdisciplinary approaches.

There also are sample lessons that help meet Common Core state standards.

A sourcebook isn't a bound book, Snyder explains. It's a handy guide of chapters that can be put into a binder. That way, teachers can easily remove and copy whatever they choose.

The origins of the teaching material stem from a model on inquiry by Richard Suchman in the 1960s. While he envisioned elementary school science classrooms, Snyder and her colleagues believe it's a perfect fit for high school social science and humanities classrooms.

“The word 'inquiry' is tossed around in education, but real inquiry is when students ask questions, not the teacher,” Snyder says.

“We find this really allows students to shift learning from short-term to long-term memory, and increases their understanding of material. They start forming really complex questions and grapple with the information," she said.

This unique, research-based inquiry model is one of many methods taught to students in the department of education's master of arts in teaching program.