Grades 7–12. Eleven statements. Agree, Disagree, or Qualify. This Warriors Don’t Cry anticipation guide prepares students for Melba Pattillo Beals’s memoir before they read a single page. The statements address courage, prejudice, resilience, violence, and freedom: the core themes running through the memoir.
Warriors Don’t Cry Anticipation Guide PDF
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Before Using This Warriors Don’t Cry Anticipation Guide
Address Sensitive Content
The abridged edition of Warriors Don’t Cry carries a low reading level, but the subject matter requires genuine maturity. The memoir contains racist violence, a description of sexual assault, racial slurs, and harsh language. Teachers and homeschool parents who assign it owe students and their families a clear, honest preview of what the text contains.
Before distributing the anticipation guide, set expectations for discourse. Consider these questions:
- What rules govern listening and respectful response in your classroom?
- How can students express discomfort or anger appropriately?
- How will you and your students handle the presence of the n-word in the memoir?
- What do students and parents need to know about your choice to include this text?
Establish Historical Context
Many students arrive without a clear picture of Little Rock in 1957, the mechanics of Jim Crow, or the legal and political forces surrounding Brown v. Board of Education. The anticipation guide works better when students can connect its abstract statements to a concrete historical moment. The following resources support pre-reading context-building:
- Media and Strategies for Teaching Warriors Don’t Cry (Facing History and Ourselves)
- The Civil Rights Movement (History.com)
- Remembering Little Rock’s Integration Battle (TIME)
- Who Was Jim Crow? (National Geographic)
- Brown v. Board of Education and Prince Edward County Schools (PBS NewsHour)
Key Themes in Warriors Don’t Cry
The anticipation guide statements connect directly to the memoir’s major themes. Identifying these themes before reading gives students a purpose for reading and a framework for discussion. The eleven statements below address:
- Courage and sacrifice
- Prejudice and empathy
- Violence and nonviolence
- Community and support
- Faith and resilience
- Freedom, rights, and the meaning of American citizenship
- The value of historical memory
- Adolescence and identity
Warriors Don’t Cry Anticipation Guide: 11 Pre-Reading Statements
For each statement, students respond with Agree, Disagree, or Qualify (agree or disagree under specific conditions). A written response follows each choice. Revisit the statements after finishing the memoir and discuss how Beals’s account supports, challenges, or complicates each one.
- “I would be willing to give up things that are important to me in order to stand up for what is right.”
Agree / Disagree / Qualify
Respond: - “I see examples of prejudice in my day-to-day life.” (Prejudice means pre-judging someone before you get to know them.)
Agree / Disagree / Qualify
Respond: - “There are many different types of courage.”
Agree / Disagree / Qualify
Respond: - “I try hard to understand points of view that are different from my own.”
Agree / Disagree / Qualify
Respond: - “When life gets hard, it is important to stand alone. Looking for support from others is pointless.”
Agree / Disagree / Qualify
Respond: - “In some instances, using violence is an appropriate option.”
Agree / Disagree / Qualify
Respond: - “It is important to look back on your life and think about it.”
Agree / Disagree / Qualify
Respond: - “You can tell a lot about someone just by looking at them.”
Agree / Disagree / Qualify
Respond: - “It is not important to think about history. What is important is the here and now.”
Agree / Disagree / Qualify
Respond: - “America truly is a free country.”
Agree / Disagree / Qualify
Respond: - “Adolescence is different from both childhood and adulthood in important ways.”
Agree / Disagree / Qualify
Respond:
Using the Warriors Don’t Cry Anticipation Guide
Move students from individual reflection to whole-group discussion in a sequence that builds confidence before requiring public positions.
- Introduce the guide and make clear that no correct answers exist. The goal is honest thinking, not performance.
- Give students time to respond in writing individually before any discussion begins.
- Move to small groups. Remind students to listen fully before responding and to treat every perspective as worth examining.
- Bring the class together. Ask each group to share one statement that generated real disagreement or surprise.
- Close by identifying the main theme subjects and asking students to predict how the memoir will develop or challenge each one.
Returning to the anticipation guide after finishing the memoir strengthens the activity significantly. Students who revisit their original responses often find that Beals has complicated rather than simply confirmed their initial positions, a productive entry point for a post-reading Socratic seminar or written argument.
Why Warriors Don’t Cry Belongs in the Classroom
Melba Pattillo Beals wrote Warriors Don’t Cry as an adult reflecting on the year she spent as one of the Little Rock Nine, nine Black students who integrated Central High School in 1957 under federal escort and sustained mob violence. The memoir gives students direct access to a pivotal moment in American history through the voice of a teenager navigating that moment in real time. The abridged edition carries a Lexile of 1000L and an upper-grade interest level, making it a strong choice for grades 7 through 12 in ELA, social studies, and history classrooms, as well as homeschool curricula. The themes the anticipation guide addresses (courage, prejudice, violence, freedom, historical memory) connect to standards across multiple disciplines and generate the kind of discussion that students remember long after the unit ends.
M. Towle is a veteran Language Arts and Social Studies teacher with fourteen years of classroom experience in urban schools in Los Angeles and Philadelphia. M. Towle holds an M.A. in Holocaust and Genocide Studies and is the founder of TeachNovels.com.