Maybe this question helps you: Set Django IntegerField by choices=… name.
I quote from the accepted answer (with adjustments ;)):
Put this into your class (STATUS_CHOICES will be the list that is handed to the choices option of the field):

PENDING = 0
DONE = 1
STATUS_CHOICES = (
    (PENDING, 'Pending'),
    (DONE, 'Done'),
)

Then you can do order.status = Order.DONE.

Note that you don’t have to implement an own method to retrieve the (readable) value, Django provides the method get_status_display itself.

Maybe this question helps you: Set Django IntegerField by choices=… name.
I quote from the accepted answer (with adjustments ;)):
Put this into your class (STATUS_CHOICES will be the list that is handed to the choices option of the field):

PENDING = 0
DONE = 1
STATUS_CHOICES = (
    (PENDING, 'Pending'),
    (DONE, 'Done'),
)

Then you can do order.status = Order.DONE.

Note that you don’t have to implement an own method to retrieve the (readable) value, Django provides the method get_status_display itself.