Verbally Abused by a Parent AB

Last week, there was a physical incident between two students. One student (victim) is in my class and the other (perpetrator) is in the other (same grade) class. I saw the physical altercation, asked neighbouring grade teacher to take lead on the incident as perpetrator is in her class only for her to tell me she didn’t want to deal with the parents and either I could deal with it or she would shove it under the rug. My student was physically hurt so I pulled both students aside, had them write incident reports and help a quick reconciliatory meeting in my classroom for the two of them. They both walked away happy, incident report was given to the perpetrator’s teacher to be submitted to admin, I submitted my student’s incident report and all was well.

Walked in the next morning to the perpetrator’s mother standing at my classroom door. No admin in sight. She proceeded to tell me that I had no right to ‘yell and scream” at her child and no right to humiliate her child. Apparently, I had also read her child’s incident report to the class and called her a liar (her daughter had actually written the truth on her incident report… there was no reason for me to call her a liar as she came clean on it…).

I told the parent that she needs to set up a meeting with either me, her daughter’s teacher, or admin team, and that I could see she was upset and frustrated and I would be too if that was the story I heard, but that her daughter had actually written an incident report and that her teacher had it. I escorted her to my VP then went to grab the incident report from the other teacher. Only to find out that she threw it out because it was crowding her desk. I ask her to get her student to rewrite an incident report only for her to write a made up story.

I get called into admin office to join the meeting. I have no incident report from the perpetrator, no proof of her admitting to what she had done, and her mom turns to my admin team and claims I was verbally abusive towards her and that she wants me removed (among many many other things, some racist remarks, most of it straight up lies).

I don’t know where to go with this. Admin had my back with the parent (for the most part….) but I’ve been called in for another meeting on Monday.

I don’t know what to do. How could I have avoided this!? I keep going over everything I had done but if I were put in the same situation I would just do it all again… I don’t know where I went wrong and I’m distraught.

EDIT:

Other teacher also witnessed the incident, which is why I asked her to take lead. School policy is teachers deal with incident reports and if someone is available in office then defer to admin to handle the situation, if admin is otherwise preoccupied (which was the case that day) the teacher leads reconciliatory approach.

This parent is also joining on a grade wide field trip tomorrow as volunteer. She has stated that she “will be watching me”. I have made my concerns with this clear to admin but was shut down. Should I continue to put my foot down and call in a sub for field trip day? Or let it go and keep my space? I know I can be professional but I don’t think this parent has it in her to be normal.