This essay is an exploratory history of American educators as viewed through the lens of disability studies. By this the author means that she is looking at the history of school teachers with disability as the primary marker of social relations, in much the same way that she and others have looked at the history of education through the primary lens of race, gender, ethnicity, age, religion, and sexuality. Looking at the history of teachers through the analytic framework of disability studies allows one to see "first," how educational systems, practices, values, and professional norms have developed in a way that excludes people with disabilities from educational employment, or assigned them to parallel and marginalized institutions of special education and "second," how notions of normality have defined the work and identity of all educators. It is this latter point that is the author's greatest interest here: how cultural concepts of ability and disability have shaped all educators' occupational identity and experience over time. She begins with a short introduction to the field of disability history; her second section is a brief review of how the history of American education has largely neglected the questions raised by disability history, drawing on her own work in the history of teachers; in the third section, she offers an initial sketch of a disability history of American teachers; fourth, she offers her insights into how contemporary American education can be viewed through the analytic lens of disabilities studies, and, finally, some concluding thoughts on the intersections of disability history and educational history. (Contains 47 footnotes.)