“Lunch Is Gross”: Gaining Access to Powerful Literacies

This ethnographic study documents how a space for critical literacy practices emerged as one teacher attempted to make literacy learning authentic. The school lunch program in an urban elementary district provided the theme for an authentic and focused literacy unit. Throughout this focus unit, the students not only met state standards but also engaged in unpacking the relationship between power and language by asking complex questions about race relations, resource inequities, and institutional politics. The description and analysis reveal and characterize three conceptual categories of critical literacy practices: 1) attentive, 2) connective, and 3) disruptive. In attentive practices, students become aware of voice in consuming and producing texts, while in connective practices, texts become a vehicle for agency. Disruptive practices bring voice and agency together to afford production of text for transformation of our world. It was through these critical literacy practices that students made meaning and communicated those meanings for real audiences and real purposes.