KETCHIKAN -- For 17 years, Mary McDonald made a career teaching fourth and fifth grade at Houghtaling Elementary.

For the past 10, Jan Haynes has taught at the same school, this year in the universal preschool.

In Mark O'Brien's fifth-grade class at Houghtaling, Chasina Worman is student teaching this year. She is working on a master's degree in education and will complete her student teaching in December.

Besides teaching at the same school, the three women share a much stronger bond as family members.

Haynes followed her mom -- McDonald -- into teaching and Worman is now following her mom -- Haynes -- into the profession. That makes three generations who have taught at the same school.

"Never thought I'd become a teacher, but they had an influence. It worked well for them and I think it was natural to follow," Worman said of her mom and grandmother. "They were great teachers and watching them was inspiring."

Worman worked as an aide at Houghtaling for the past two years. She began her student teaching at the first of the school year.

When she was younger, Worman spent time in Haynes' classroom after school "sharpening pencils," but didn't think much about teaching.

However, moving back to Ketchikan after getting an undergraduate degree at Prairie View A&M in Texas, Worman got the aide position working with the reading program. She also worked as a long-term substitute last year.

After that she decided to pursue teaching.

"I found that I enjoyed it. I subbed for awhile and really liked it," Worman said. "I guess that was the beginning. It's neat to see kids grow. It's challenging and it's different every day."

Worman is getting her master's degree from the University of Alaska Southeast Juneau campus.

According to the UAS Juneau Web site, students are recommended for a teaching certificate upon completion of the one-year program. Certification is granted by the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development.

Haynes said she was surprised when Worman decided get a teaching degree.

"I was shocked when she told me she was going to get her master's, but I could kind of see this developing over time," Haynes said. "She has a love of being with the kids and of teaching. She got the bug bad."

When talking about her choice to get into teaching, Worman pointed in the direction of her grandmother's old classroom. McDonald died in 2006.

McDonald team-taught with Clint Pribyl at Houghtaling. Worman is doing her student teaching just one classroom down the hall from her grandmother's.

Haynes remembered when McDonald did her student teaching in Fairbanks during the late 1960s. McDonald would get dressed in her full fur to walk the more than a mile from the apartment to the school where she was teaching, sometimes in temperatures of 50 degrees below zero.

In the early years of McDonald's teaching, Haynes and her brother, Steve McDonald, called themselves guinea pigs, because McDonald tried new teaching methods on them.

"Any new things that came along, whether it was word of the week or whatever, my mom would try it out on he and I in the summer, so we called ourselves guinea pigs from an early age," Haynes said. "We laughed about it, because it was fun."

Even before she became a teacher at Houghtaling, McDonald spent years as a substitute at various schools throughout the district, Haynes said.