This week, we are excited to profile the extraordinary Phillip Hon, a career educator from Stockton, CA and the founder and executive director of Unbound Stockton Community School.
No one would blame Phillip Hon if he had gotten discouraged. It was a difficult journey to get the school he founded—Unbound Stockton—up and running. And it took over six years.
But Phillip did not get discouraged. Instead, he persevered—driven by a deep commitment to his home community of Stockton and the support of families and charter school partners.
‘If you want to be successful you have to get out’
As a young person growing up in Stockton, Phillip was a strong student. But, he said, “the prevailing narrative in Stockton is if you want to be successful you have to get out.”
Phillip took many AP classes and participated in ample extracurricular activities. That diligence got him to Stanford University as a first-generation college student.
At Stanford, Phillip experienced a major academic shift. He struggled to keep up and realized that he had never really acquired the skills needed to learn and study, only how to behave in class and turn assignments in on time. To him, education had been akin to a box-checking exercise—not an active experience.
“I felt like I knew how to play a game in school versus actually knowing how to learn,” Phillip said. “But I saw that extracurricular involvement and leadership was a place I really engaged in. I never quite caught my footing academically, but where I continued to fit in was being very involved at school.”
Learning about charter schools
In that time, Phillip was an active member of the Asian American Student Association and student government. He also led an alternative spring break trip that focused on “change making leadership.”
On that trip, Phillip first learned about charter schools, visiting Match Charter High School in Boston (Jed has written about Match and Boston’s charter school scene before). Match is an innovative, high performing school with three campuses serving about 1,250 students in grades preK-12.
That visit was a catalyst for Phillip’s career. There, he saw a new kind of school—one made possible by the flexibility of the charter model. He started to think that it was possible to create a more active education experience for students—one that activated their leadership potential and nurtured their community ties outside the four walls of a classroom.
“Ever since that trip I was like, ‘I want to start a school!’ So, this has been a 17-year journey,” he said. “Match broke this narrative of what I thought high school was. For something that really had a mission, a focus—it really turned things on its head. It was groundbreaking for me, to build something that was different.”
Teaching in Hawai’i
His senior year of college, Phillip learned about Teach For America (TFA). He felt like his mindset aligned with TFA’s mission and it “seemed like a great fit” based on his interest in education.
Through TFA, Phillip landed at Aiea Intermediate School teaching middle school in Aiea, Hawai’i. He dedicated himself to his students, sticking with them for six years all the way through their graduation from Aiea High School.
In his time in Hawai’i, Phillip’s desire to help more kids have leadership opportunities and develop a strong sense of connection to the land and community only grew. Though it would buck the narrative about Stockton that he had heard as a young person, Phillip decided to return home and achieve his dream of opening a school.
“When I visited Match, they talked about robust family engagement, Saturday schools, tutors who live in their building,” he said. “In opening a charter school, I would be able to have more autonomy and focus on something in particular we could create.”
Opening Unbound
As Phillip set out to open Unbound Stockton, he discovered a bumpy road.
“I was cautious, but I thought there would be more success,” he said. “Several charter schools opened in Stockton in 2019, so I thought it was the right time. But then the law changed, and it made it more difficult.”
Phillip’s attempts to open Unbound were—on multiple occasions—met with resistance.
“After all the rejection, I could’ve walked away, but families and board members encouraged me to keep going,” he said. “Advocacy for me is about building relationships and creating trust. I think there is some level of investing in relationships and demonstrating how strongly you are part of the community or are willing to invest that I think maybe made a shift in the decision making. We weren’t going away—I think it showed how committed we were to families. It showed that when things got tough, we’d be able to sustain.”
Leaning on support
Throughout that process, Phillip leaned on the support and encouragement of the larger charter school community.
“It took time for people to understand and know that it wasn’t just my advocacy, it was the advocacy of partners too. It built a lot of momentum,” he said.
After over half a decade of trying, Unbound Stockton opened this year. The school serves about 100 students in grades 4-8. Honoring his deep commitment to student leadership and community connections, Unbound helps students actively engage beyond the classroom. Every Friday, Unbound students connect with local leaders and organizations.
“They’ll no longer have the same kind of disdain or lack of connection that myself and many of my peers did. This is part of our theory of change, developing kids who are engaged and involved, and see themselves as leaders,” he said. “Staying and creating change here is an option.”