As you walk into the classroom this morning there may be a new face at the teacher's desk as COVID-19 displaces many from the front line.
And the call has gone out for veteran staff to return to the classroom.
NT Education Department program manager Brenda Moore was three years into the corporate side of the department when she was happy to answer the call to return to the classroom.
"I absolutely love reconnecting with the students again, it's fantastic," she said.
"And working with my teaching colleagues in schools. Affirming is the word I would use."
Ms Moore is one of 85 corporate-based qualified teachers to return to 46 schools, and has been to six different schools in term one, teaching preschool to year 12.
As of last week, there were 61 teacher vacancies across NT schools.
"It was just slotting back in, really," she said.
Things have changed a lot since her first teaching job at the rural Howard Springs Primary School 36 years ago.
"Teaching as a whole has a greater understanding of the whole child, the social and emotional side of the child, which will affect their ability to learn," Ms Bowden said.
Ms Moore has also taught and been a vice principal at Moulden and Girraween primaries, and Darwin's Henbury School.
While Ms Moore could write the book on teaching, she said she learned a few new tricks at the coalface.
"Now I'm back in the office taking all my learnings from schools and putting them into my work within corporate," she said.
"So it's actually been a win-win situation because I get to see what schools have done and actually see how my work can add value."
Trying times
Education Union NT branch secretary Adam Lampe said it was reasonable to expect many of the 100 corporate-based teachers to return to the classroom in these times.
"The issue we have is that those people are doing important work," he told ABC Radio Darwin Late Breakfast.
"They're providing curriculum and behaviour management support for teachers in the classroom.
"When those jobs aren't being done then the workload goes back on the teachers in the classroom, or it doesn't get done, so you have a lower quality of service."
Mr Lampe has experience in time out of the classroom.
"You do get rusty. Teaching is absolutely a physically and mentally demanding job and I found it took two or three months to get back into the swing of it," he said.
"You're on your feet all the time all day. There's no rest.
Which would you rather?
Education Department deputy chief executive Susan Bowden confirmed "a number" of staff had been knocked out by COVID-19 in their households.
"It's certainly been an incredibly challenging time," she said.
"Schools do manage the best they can internally. And there have been a whole lot of different strategies schools have used internally."
Relief teachers, retired teachers, and principals have been recalled.
"Between those 85 staff members, they've completed 874 days of teaching in Territory classrooms, so that we haven't had to close our schools.
"I'm incredibly proud to be working with such an amazing professional team during this challenging time."
Ms Bowden said she was aware of specialist teachers having to teach subjects out of their wheelhouse.
"In these trying times, our absolute priority here is to have teachers in front of the classroom," she said.
"I certainly know as a parent I would rather that happen than having a phone call to say 'come and collect your children. We don't have a teacher today'."
Additional reporting by Adam Steer and Jack Hislop
