Built by a clinician-educator, for educators.
Sustainable Teaching is the education practice of Practical Innovations — applying the Occupational Distress Syndrome framework and the Compassion Solution to the specific realities of K-12 and higher education.
Russ L’HommeDieu, DPT, EdD(c)
Russ L’HommeDieu has spent three decades at the intersection of clinical care and healthcare education — as a Doctor of Physical Therapy, an educator, and a doctoral candidate in education. That dual vantage point is where the Occupational Distress Syndrome framework was born: from watching capable, caring professionals be slowly worn down by systems that asked more than anyone could sustain.
He founded Practical Innovations to translate clinical insight into practical tools for the helping professions. Sustainable Teaching brings that work home to education — where the same pathways play out in classrooms, lecture halls, and advising offices every day.
Caring people don’t burn out because they care too much. They burn out because no one taught them how to care sustainably.
The principles behind the practice.
Seen first, then equipped
Every educator deserves to have their experience named accurately before being handed a solution. Validation isn’t a nicety — it’s the foundation.
Evidence over platitudes
No resilience slogans, no toxic positivity. The work is grounded in a clinical model of distress and a trainable, studied response.
Cause, not blame
We locate distress in the system and its pathways — never in a supposed deficit of grit in the people doing the caring.
Sustainable, not heroic
The goal isn’t to help you endure more. It’s to make caring something you can do for an entire career.
Part of a connected body of work.
Sustainable Teaching draws on a family of resources built around the ODS framework and compassion practice.
Practical Innovations
The parent practice translating clinical insight into tools for the helping professions.
See where you stand.
The assessment is the simplest place to begin — about ten minutes to name what you've been carrying.