In June 1892, Anne was elected a member of the American Association to Promote the Teaching of Speech to the Deaf. In 1894, Alexander Graham Bell asked her to give a speech at an Association meeting. She was so shy, however, that Bell had to deliver the speech for her.

It was at this meeting that Anne and Helen met a man named John D. Wright. He convinced them to attend a new school in New York City run by him and a colleague. Helen was the only deaf-blind pupil at the Wright-Humason School for the Deaf. Anne was critical of the teaching methods used there, which were very different from hers. She writes the following to John Hitz, Alexander Graham Bell's assistant at the Volta Bureau:

Helen learned language almost as unconsciously as the normal child. Here it is made a "lesson." The child sits in-doors [sic], and for an hour the teacher endeavors more or less skilfully [sic] to engrave words upon his brain....The contrast between these children's plodding pursuit of knowledge and Helen's bounding joyousness makes me wonder.

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