2/20/2026 6-8 Grade by Kathy Wales

My tours focused on mythical creatures originating from mythologies in Asia. I am avoiding Dave Kim’s theme of the many stages of the immigrant journey because that has not been my personal journey. Also, I am reluctant to ask students to make connections between his journey and their journeys which are highly personal and particularly sensitive when ICE is seizing people off the street in Pasadena. That said, this is what we did on my four tours (Feb. 19 and Feb. 20).

We organized our clipboards with a handout that I had prepared. Then, we created and sketched on our handouts a hybrid creature, with each person in the group suggesting a physical feature. For example, body of bird, neck of giraffe, head of horse, ears of elephant, and so on. Then, we looked at my handout which shows two categories of creatures from Asian mythologies: Hybrid Creatures and Shapeshifter Creatures. By then, they already had the concept of “hybrid,” so we turned to shapeshifters where we had a conversation about what they are, their favorites, etc. We then looked at my handout to see the creatures listed under each category: Hybrid – dragon, qilin/kirin, phoenix, garuda; and Shapeshifters – nine-tail fox and tanuki. Our goal was to make a check mark on the handouts each time we saw one of these creatures.

Upon entering a gallery, we looked for the creatures listed on the handout, working individually, with partners or in small groups. Then, we compared results and had conversations about which creatures on the list pulled them in/made them wonder and why. We focused on close looking so that we could make comparisons when we saw the same creatures in other galleries and they could choose their favorite creature at the end of the tour. As part of close looking, we talked about the physical features of each hybrid creature.

We sometimes talked about creatures that they liked but which are not my list. We tried to do this in a way so that they could make comparisons and connections – for example, the faces of the copper deer in the wetlands to the face of the kirin in the forest or the legs of the cranes in the wetlands to the legs of the phoenix.

We also had some good laughs – waving our arms like a phoenix and imitating the pose of tanuki.

As part of our conversations, I tried to convey a variety of things. For example, I sometimes asked them about the dates when objects had been created to convey that the creatures have been depicted by artists over the centuries. I gave examples to convey that the creatures are more than symbols of various things (e.g., good luck or blessings) but also carry stories with life-lessons. Sometimes we looked at where the objects were created to convey that although a creature may appear across Asian mythology, it may be depicted and interpreted differently from culture to culture (e.g., Japan vs. China).

Clipboards helped immensely with group management and getting responses from everyone in the group. I would use the clipboards in a slightly different way if I gave the group more freedom to choose the subjects of close-looking. In that case, I would ask them to write down several words that come to mind when looking at the object and to group share those words.