At the age of 16 alexander started to help teach young deaf mutes; children who could not hear or speak. He used his father's system of 'visible speech' and achieved amazing results. A few years later, while working in london, alexander met two men who would play an important role in his life.
Unfortunately, it was around this time that the fatal disease called the white plague, spread through Britain and both Alexander's brothers died. Alexander was teaching to a tribe of Mohawk Indians in a small Canadian town called Brantford, when the Boston Board of Education asked him to come and work in the USA at a new school for deaf mutes.