EXCLUSIVE: Toronto-area school taught third graders how to “get into drag”

A public elementary school in Caledon, Ontario, is facing scrutiny after it was revealed that an activist teacher has been instructing third-grade students on gender ideology and “white privilege."

A public elementary school in Caledon, Ontario, is facing scrutiny after it was revealed that an activist teacher has been instructing third-grade students on gender ideology and “white privilege” for several years.

Rachel Redman, an elementary school teacher now teaching Grades 4 and 5, according to her X account, has shared images of lessons taught to students over several years.

These lessons, taught to children as early as Grade 3, included teaching students that gender is a “feeling,” that life is easier for white people, and other identifiable characteristics. It also taught children about drag performers and how to “get into” drag.

The images, posted by Redman and curated by former Ontario high school teacher Chanel Pfahl, are mainly from 2023 and 2024, when Redman taught a Grade 3 class. Others are from 2025, in Redman’s Grade 4/5 split class, according to Pfahl.

View the photos from the classroom

“This is just another example of hundreds that I’ve posted to my X account, of schools in Canada teaching ideology as fact,” Pfahl told True North. “It’s not a one-off where the teacher will be exposed and fired for misconduct. Sadly, this is what the Ministry of Education, and by extension Ontario school boards, think is appropriate in schools.”

She said the ideological activism being pushed in elementary schools “is completely out of line and out of touch with what ordinary parents want.”

“Any reasonable parent knows there is nothing acceptable about teaching an 8-year-old child that they can be a boy, a girl, neither, or both,” Pfahl said. “Teaching that white people are ‘privileged’ is equally divisive, harmful and frankly, reckless.”

Pfahl provided screenshots from Redman’s social media, which is now closed, to True North. In one image posted to promote June as Pride Month, shared with Tony Pontes Public School and the Peel District School Board, the slideshow shows several questions, including “How do you get into drag? What do you get out of being a drag performer?” and “Are there differences between you and your drag persona?”

Before the launch of the popular show “Ru Paul’s Drag Race,” drag performances were typically held in underground, adult-only venues and were strictly an adult experience due to their sexual nature and adult themes.

Redman also promoted a lesson titled “Life is a bit easier for someone just because their identity; skin colour, nationality, gender, culture, sexual orientation, ability, education and religion.”

Commentators on Phfal’s post said the move would result in children hyper-fixating on differences of opinion.

“They’re literally teaching elementary students to judge each other by their appearance in Ontario. What a toxic message,” said Jamie Sarkonak, a columnist for the National Post. “This is entirely the choice of the government, by the way. Minister Paul Calandra could get rid of this if he wanted.”

One still showed a video describing “white privilege” to the students.

When students were asked what the word privilege means and if they have privilege, Redman took photos of some of what the children wrote, indicating she approved of the direction the students’ answers were leaning.

“Privilege means when something is easier like white people have more privilege than black,” one child wrote. Another wrote, “When something is small and you can only notice it a little / trans racist homophobic.”

Sarkonak noted Caledon’s white population dropped from 80 per cent in 2016 to 66 per cent in 2021.

“It’s insane that teachers in Caledon are stoking animosity against the city’s fastest-shrinking (relatively),” she said in a post. “This is not a message for social cohesion, especially under mass immigration.”

One slide shows a question asking students to identify the more than 12-character acronym describing the LGBT community: “What does 2SLGBTQQIPPA+ stand for?”

When asked what gender means, students responded: “If you are a girl or boy you can be both,” and multiple children said gender is “how you feel inside.”

Another image showed multiple cartoon characters identifying themselves as female, male, “neither,” or “both.” One slide simply said, “Gender = feelings and Sex = body.”

Today, the Merriam-Webster dictionary distinguishes sex and gender, defining gender as “behavioural, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex.” But 20 years ago, institutions understood the word gender as a synonym and euphemism for sex.

The 2001 edition of the Oxford dictionary described gender as “The state of being male or female (typically used with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones)“ and did not indicate any other state.

Other posts Redland felt worthy to post online included a lesson on non-binary babies.

The Ontario Ministry of Education, Ontario PC Education Minister Paul Calandra, and the Peel District School Board did not respond to True North’s requests for comment.

An automated response from Tony Pontes Public School indicated that students and staff were on break until Monday and, therefore, did not respond.