What's Lunch Got to Do with It? Critical Literacy and the Discourse of the Lunchroom

Critical literacy practices in a third-grade classroom involved working with texts that disrupted commonplace assumptions about social norms. As students read and talked about social issues such as racism, ageism, and sexism, they became "border crossers" in their school lunchroom. Without informing their teacher, they worked on a social action project that involved sitting together at lunch tables that were previously segregated by gender. Three conceptions of critical literacy are salient to this study: critical literacy as sociological stance, critical literacy as praxis, and critical literacy as discourse analysis. Elements of Gee's Bid D Discourse Analysis were used to identify the roles students played as they worked to disrupt lunchroom norms. Roles and identities were fluid and changeable as students grappled with issues of citizenship--personal freedom and social responsibility, independence and group identity. Critical literacy practices allowed students to connect the texts they read within the classroom to the lives they lead outside the classroom. (Contains 3 tables.)