Schools : Storyteller Spins Tales of Cultural Tolerance : Teaching: In school performances, Ray De La Paz is part folklorist, part moralist and part stand-up comic.

The turban on Ray De La Paz’s head elicits squeals of laughter from his audience of fifth- and sixth-graders at Barfield Elementary in Pomona.

“Hey, is that a baby blanket on your head? I hope you remembered to take the baby out!” he teases himself, playing both roles in a story about an American boy, Mickey, and a classmate from India that he taunts and then befriends.

De La Paz, a professional storyteller, is part folklorist, part moralist, part stand-up comic. The fables he invents weave lessons of cultural tolerance into adventure tales. And when their giggles subside, he said, children get the message.

Mickey, for instance, chides the boy from India for wearing a turban, but then becomes enthralled when the boy presents him with a book on India that shows children riding elephants. As an adult, Mickey visits India and wears a turban to ward off the scalding heat.

Like other stories De La Paz performs, it evokes the exotic but brings it close to home.

“Especially in our area, because we have such a distinct group of children, it’s important for them to learn about other cultures so they can accept each other,” said Barfield Principal Terri Mora, whose school is about 65% Latino and 35% black with a few Hawaiian, Vietnamese American and Korean American students.

“Sometimes with stories, kids have a better understanding than (with) me lecturing them,” Mora said. “They internalize the message from the story and then they remember it.”

De La Paz reassures children that their feelings and problems are valid. A song, “Fifth-Grade Blues,” describes the worst day in the life of a fifth-grader.

“I want kids to know that some adults know that they have trouble in school,” he said.

The Claremont resident began telling stories as a bedtime ritual for his stepdaughter. She would spin a globe and he’d spin a tale about the country her finger landed on.

Later he approached her principal at the Jane Warner School in Altadena and asked to perform for the students. That went over so well that she asked him to return as a music and drama teacher. Since then he has pieced together a living telling stories, giving animation workshops for children and playing original songs. A graduate of Art Center’s film department, he hopes to make multicultural children’s films and is working on a screenplay.

Without preaching, De La Paz tries to impart empathy to the children he teaches and performs for, drawing on his own unusual background to do that.

Born in New York City to a Cuban mother and Panamanian father, the 39-year-old De La Paz said, “Spanish was my first language, culturally I was African American and I grew up in a white society. I grew up on the Beatles and I grew up on samba.”

A visit to his grandparents in Cuba turned into a three-year exile when, at the age of 6, he was trapped during the Bay of Pigs invasion and refused exit by Fidel Castro.

Knowing what it is like on the other side of American missiles gave him insight into what the people of Iraq experienced during Desert Storm, and he sets some stories there to counteract negative stereotypes from the Gulf War.

By getting children to laugh about their prejudices, he works at dispelling them.

“One kid told me after a show, ‘I thought guys in turbans only blew up things,’ ” he said. “I said, ‘All I’ve ever blown up is a balloon.’ ”