No, their stress was not self-induced. Teachers I know were being held accountable for their students not logging in from home, not completing assignments, etc. In my area, less than %20 of the total student population participated in online classes. When the district went back to 5 day Face to Face it stayed the same.
Teachers were being pressured to pass them anyway because “if we retain everyone who hasn’t done the work then we will need to build more classrooms to accommodate everyone repeating”. A friend of mine pointed out this August they are going to have a class of 2nd graders who do not know how to behave in a classroom/structured setting. Many if not most will not have the basic foundations of reading or math so 2nd grade teachers will now be tasked with teaching kindergarten skills on top of wheat they are required to cover for 2nd grade. I predict an explosion of referrals to Special Education because the kids will be behavior problems in the classroom and they will be so far behind academically they will not be able to do the classwork.
Another nugget most people don’t realize is school districts were not dropping students who missed enough days to be dropped from the roster previously (in the district I live in if a student misses 10 unexcused days they are automatically dropped), The reason the schools aren’t dropping them- as long as the students are on the roster they get federal and state funds.
They should have contacted every Charter School and Home schooled teachers to see how they handled this. I had three granddaughters tahen out of public schools and taught over the computer. They excelled!