Educators exert a tremendous influence on gifted children's academic and social-emotional development, thus their perceptions of these students is critical. Many factors are associated with a successful classroom experience for the gifted child, and the classroom teacher plays a vital role in that success. The teacher influences not only the academic side of classroom life, but the personal one as well. There is a growing research interest in the interpersonal relationship between teacher and child and how it affects the child's experience in the classroom (Pianta, 1992, Kesner, 2000), but this research has not been systematically applied to the study of gifted children.