A LinkedIn notification landed in my inbox. Someone I’d just met in Boston typed a message. Jon Ketler is gone.
The weight of it hit like a brick to the chest.
I sat with it. The silence felt heavy. Here was a man who gave everything to kids, to a rust-belt city, to a stubborn idea. He shared his thinking with me, freely and often. Now he was just… not there.
For ten years, I’ve written about revolutionizing education. I look for proof. Real proof. Not theory, not white papers, but dirt under fingernails. When I need that, Jon is the first name I reach for.
He proved something radical: one person, with enough nerve and imagination, can plug into the public system and build something better. Not theoretically. Actually.
The Art of Starting
It started with a teacher getting restless.
Early 2000s. Tacoma, Washington. Jon was teaching ceramics. He liked the students. He liked the craft. But he hated the disconnect. Tacoma had world-class artists. Glassblowers. Sculptors. The Chihuly Museum. Yet his students were stuck in a classroom for fifty minutes, listening to him talk about art instead of making it with people who knew the job.
What if they worked side-by-side? In actual studios?
That question birthed the Tacoma School of the Arts (SOTA). It opened in 201. Just 170 kids. The campus was downtown storefronts. An old music store. A former post office. Connected by sidewalks.
Students walked to class for PE credit. The city was the school. By design.
Jon told me once that he didn’t wait for a committee. He wrote the idea down. To clarify it. To sharpen it. Then he just told everyone.
“Once you start sharing it… you have to be willing to move forward.”
It worked. The city became the classroom. Mentors were working pros, not lecturers. I still can’t quite believe we did this.
Science, Math, and Sunlight
He did it again.
Tacoma has a massive city park. Point Defiance. Old-growth forest. Puget Sound. Marine life.
Jon and his team asked: Why not build a science school right here?
So they launched the Science and Math Institute (SAMI). At first, it was portable classrooms tucked into the trees. By the water.
Students didn’t memorize textbooks. They did original research. With University of Washington marine biologists. They interned at the zoo next door. It was raw. Real.
Later, a bond vote funded a proper building. Wood. Glass. Sunlight streaming in next to the animal habitats.
If the Mountain Won’t Come
Then came the hard one. IDEA — The School of Industrial Design, Engineering and the Arts.
Usually, the district gave him assets. A downtown location. A park.
For IDEA, they gave him a vacant elementary school. In the middle of a residential neighborhood. Nowhere near industry. Nowhere near design firms.
Logically, the model failed here. You need proximity to partners. You didn’t have them.
But Jon? Jon moved the mountain.
He didn’t wait for businesses to come to the school. He brought the businesses into the building. Free office space in exchange for mentorship. A furniture maker. An industrial designer. A skate shop. A bike repair shop.
If the geography failed, change the geography inside the walls.
Kristin Tinder, his co-director, put it bluntly: You solve the distance by flipping the relationship. You pull the community into the classroom.
Melissa Moffett described the instinct. Start doing the thing. Show it works. Then the money follows. “We’re not taking no… we’re asking you how can we make this happen?”
The Next Move
And he wasn’t done.
He helped launch Next Move. Internships. For every high schooler in Tacoma Public Schools. Not just his arts or science kids. Every single one.
Mind. Blown.
The Man Behind the Blueprint
I remember Jon more than I remember the buildings.
He was generous with time. He let me in. He answered questions.
A few years back, he hopped on a Zoom call. Huddled with Monica, Alexa, Britney. In a small office inside the old post office they leased. Four people explaining how to rebuild public education from the inside out in a repurposed government building.
They talked about the hard part. Culture.
“You have to maintain it all the time.”
It wasn’t a launch-and-forget project. It was a daily commitment. Jon insisted on ownership. Not control, but ownership. For the kids. For the staff.
“We’re never finished.”
Keep pushing. Keep looking differently. Don’t get comfortable with what you’ve already done.
When I started my podcast, I had Jon on Episode 2. Alongside Trace Pickering from Iowa BIG and Ben Owens from rural North Carolina. Different regions. Same story: Find what your town has. Build around that.
Why It Hurts
Jon belongs to a specific breed of giant.
Trace Pickering. Shawn Cornally. Ben Pendarvis. Rob Riordan. Larry Rosenstock. Dennis Littky. Matt Wunder.
People who see a learner, not a curriculum. People who believe students doing real work on real problems can change their trajectory.
We talk about policy. We talk about philanthropy. We wait for permission.
They don’t.
Jon showed me in 2013, face to face. He offered a charge I’ve carried ever since:
“Find a place… find some friends… and water the seed.”
Get inspired. Don’t copy. Just water the seed.
Nine words. A life’s argument.
Jon Ketler was the proof that it works.
The message from Boston said: “He changed how I see the function of school.”
But then she added the harder truth. “It’s pretty hard to imagine a world without him.”
I will miss the chat. I will miss the vision. I will miss the reminder that you can just go build it, even when the district says the location is wrong.
Thanks for the inspiration, Jon. For the time. For the truth.
