In considering how to promote inclusive environments, one of the conference themes, school climate is of utmost importance for children and educators. School climate involves the values, norms, practices, and relationships within schools (Thapa et al., 2013) and has been shown to contribute to feelings of belonging, safety, and inclusion as well as academic success, school engagement and positive and negative behavior (Marshall, 2004; Wang & Holcombe, 2010). Drawing on data from teachers and students in schools throughout the U.S., this symposium identifies key aspects of school climate and how they relate to students’ and teachers’ feelings of connection, experiences with school violence, and resilience after violence exposure. The first presentation, taking the teachers’ perspective, draws from a sample of 2,431 teachers’ descriptions of their most upsetting experiences with violence in school. Using and adapting a school climate framework, we elaborated upon the four domains of school climate (safety, community, academics, and institutional environment) and corresponding dimensions to understand teacher experiences with violence. Common themes were identified and examples will illustrate teachers’ experiences with violence from multiple perpetrators, including students, parents, colleagues, and administrators. These themes help to expand our understanding of how violence relates school climate. The second presentation considers how school climate (e.g., attitudes towards school, feelings of trust/safety at school), perceived empowerment, and maternal support buffer the detrimental effects of school violence. Guided by Resiliency Theory, a cumulative promotive factor approach was used with 444 youth (10-14 years) in Florida to test the moderating effect of this factor on the path between exposure to violence at time 1 and aggressive behavior at time 2. The third presentation involves a content analysis of 1,226 middle-schoolers’ (11-14 years) responses to what they like most about their school and what they would like to see improve. These responses, thematically coded in light of the school climate framework, were used to predict students’ sense of belonging to school. While we found most aspects of climate to be significantly related to feelings of belonging, the magnitude of these relationships varied based on gender, age, and ethnicity, demonstrating that within the same school, climate is perceived differently and differentially influences students’ feeling of connection to the school. Collectively, these three presentations, along with facilitated audience discussion, underscore the importance of school climate for promoting feelings of inclusion for students and teachers as well as supporting children’s resilience in the face of school violence.