In 1815 he traveled with Sicard and Massieu to England to give a lecture and coincidentally met Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet who was traveling in search of means for instructing deaf children. Gallaudet was invited to visit the school in Paris. Then in 1816, after a few months of hospitation, he invited Clerc to accompany him to the United States to establish the first permanent school for the Deaf in Hartford, Connecticut, which now is known as American School for the Deaf.