Should teacher report another teacher she heard bullying a colleague? 

Q: I’m a teacher and was on bus duty the other day. As streams of kids exited the school and boarded their respective buses, I overheard one of my colleagues say some nasty stuff to a fellow teacher. The comments had to do with why that teacher was never assigned to teach honors-level classes, and the insinuation was that she was stupid and couldn’t be trusted to teach advanced courses or interact with the parents of the smart kids in our community. I heard her say something about how she dresses trashy and has a limited vocabulary and how the whole department finds her embarrassing. This teacher happens to be from another culture and is bilingual, but she speaks English fluently. And while the bully didn’t directly name the woman’s culture, the whole exchange smacked of racism to me. Meanwhile, the teacher looked stricken. She was biting her nails and quietly staring at the ground, and this colleague just kept on harassing her. I was uncomfortable and my jaw was on the ground, but I didn’t say a thing. Now I feel really guilty and am losing sleep over this, but I’m on the fence about how to proceed. Would you let it go but speak up if it happens again? Report the nasty teacher to the principal and risk the woman’s ire? For what it’s worth, these are two teachers in the same department, and neither is in charge of anyone but themselves. 

A: Let’s shift the narrative. Imagine you were on bus duty and you heard a student verbally assault another student, and it sounded racist, and you could tell the other kid was deeply upset but paralyzed. Would you intervene? What would you do? My guess is you would step in to stop the abuse and comfort the target. There would be much less ambiguity. You likely would report the exchange to an administrator who could hold the aggressor accountable, and the next time you saw the targeted child, you’d inquire about her well-being.