Friendly advice, please.
DD has been coming home with stories about a friend of hers being bullied. There are 2 first year dual immersion classes in her school, and she seems to have lucked into the one with pretty good kids. But there's a girl she met through Music Theater class who is in the other, and the girl has no friends in her class. She's been hanging around DD and her friends because they are nice to her. So, there's this girl in the other class, I'll call her A. A is constantly picking on L. Yesterday, L fell off her bike and had an ice pack tied to her foot/ankle. A came up and I'm not sure what she did, but L said to please be careful of her hurt foot, so A said "Oh....your foot hurts?" and started kicking the foot. L is...well, a feisty red-head, and she started hitting A. A teacher came out in time to see that A started it, or that she was more aggressive, and so she broke up the fight and was scolding the girls and A was getting all mouthy. The girls have the same mentor and he came and took the girls to his office to have a chat, so I don't know what happened after that, but DD said A is a brown noser and really good at playing the victim and spinning it so that teachers think she's innocent. Apparently this girl is one of those really pretty girls, and she's obviously intelligent if she's in the Dual immersion class because that's only offered at the highest level...but she's very charming to teachers. And she has this group of boys who hang with her, and they took L's bag, and when she tried to get it back, the one boy dropped his phone, and when he picked it up, he turned it off, and went and told a teacher L had broken it to get her in trouble....it wasn't even broken. He also threw some trash on the L's head at one point, and I guess yesterday, when L was sitting with DD and her friends, one of the boys walked by and said "Oh....L DOES have friends!" And when the group was picking on L, DD and the others stood up for her and told them to leave her alone, and the boy said "You're just one of those dual immersion nerds!" to DD...DD is proud to be a nerd, so she just said "Yes I am, and proud of it! Thank you!" and one of her other friends said "I'd rather be a dual immersion nerd than be you!"
A is also constantly telling them to speak Dutch....in lessons, the dual immersion kids have to speak in English or they get points deducted, and of course DD speaks English fluently, but she practices with her friends in the breaks. A doesn't like it that they all speak English, so she's always ragging on them for it. But it's this whole group of kids with A at the helm who bully L.
So....I'm not sure how to handle it. On the one hand, I know that the teachers caught the girls fighting yesterday, and that a teacher was involved in the incident where the kid said L broke his phone, so they obviously know these kids don't get along. On the other hand, DD told me that A and her crew are really good at playing the victims, and at sucking up to the teachers, so the teachers might not believe that it's A and her friends doing the bullying.
I also think that kids do need to learn to handle these things themselves, by talking to a teacher or something, but even though there were kids who witnessed the fight yesterday, the teacher never asked any of them how it started, and I'm not sure L has reported the bullying or not. She lives in Germany, but goes to school here because she was bullied in her elementary school there in Germany. She's no stranger to bullying, so I'm not sure she trusts that the school will do anything about it....she just reacts herself.
You all know how I feel about bullying and why, so I don't want to just let it go, but I also don't want to make it worse by making A and her minions think that L tattled, or make her target DD because SHE tattled. So...do I contact the school and let them know what's going on, or do I let it go and hope that the kids tell someone and that it will motivate A to stop, or that it will get her suspended? If I go to the school, do I talk to DD's mentor or do I go straight to the top? I obviously have not witnessed it myself, I've only heard what DD has told me. DD does have a good reputation with her teachers, so I think they'd believe her if it was her word against A's, but if A finds out it was DD who got her in trouble, she might start in on DD, so I'd kind of rather keep it anonymous as much as possible. Ideas??
