While talents are common to find among the student body, secret passions are also concealed within members of ADM’s staff. The Spanish I and Spanish II teacher, Madeleine Gude, and the French teacher, Lori Rezek, both have a unique talent for the clarinet. While both are foreign language teachers now, their passion for music and their past with their shared hobby have had an influential effect.

“I started in fifth grade, so I played all through high school and college, and in my 20s, I still played. I even taught lessons for a while.” Rezek said. “I was more involved, like I played in the community band and taught lessons, but then I had my kids and got busy, and I kind of let it go.”

While Rezek enjoyed French, she did not begin with the idea of teaching French. Originally, she attended UNI as a music major and was involved in many musical activities and ensembles.

“Being a music major was a lot of fun, actually. I was in the marching band, and I was involved in a lot of ensembles. You make friends really quickly that way in college. It’s just your whole life,” Rezek said. “It’s a lot of hard work, but I really did love it for the time that I was there.”

Her time as a music major put her under pressure, despite her love for the art. While now she’s a teacher, she used to be a focused and ambitious musician.

“I was at a point where I was practicing like four to six hours a day. At the time, I [felt] like I was a good musician, but I had to work really hard to be good. It didn’t come easy for me,” Rezek said. “Some people are just so gifted, and they can just not practice and be amazing, and that wasn’t the case for me. I had to work really hard.”

Eventually, her interests and the course of her career changed, landing her in the spot she is today.

“I just toured to Europe with the wind symphony at UNI, and then I fell in love with speaking French and decided to pursue French and became a double major in French and music,” Rezek said.

Despite her career not turning out how she originally expected, Rezek does not see her pursuit of music as a waste of time. Rather, she sees it as a significant aspect of her life that made her into who she is today.

“I think I just got to a point where I wanted to spend some of my life out of the practice room, so I don’t know that I would have changed anything,” Rezek said. “I think all that I did in music has prepared me for teaching — like the performing, the working as a part of an ensemble with other people, and the listening that you do, and creating an art — I think that all prepared me for teaching, so I don’t have any regrets, but I do miss it sometimes, in my heart.”

Gude’s involvement in music is also similar. Just like Rezek, she began playing the clarinet in the fifth grade with her band. With Gude, much of her passion comes from the people in life.

“My mom’s a band director, and she also was a clarinetist herself before she switched over to bassoon when she was in seventh grade, and so she had this really crusty clarinet, super plastic, super bad, from the ’70s that I played on. It was awful,” Gude said. “But I did not want to wait in line to try out instruments, so we just went home, and she’s like, ‘this is what you’re doing because I could actually help you learn how to play the clarinet’, so I thrived despite playing on that really crappy clarinet for three years — my first three years of playing.”

Even as her joy for music grew and she entered high school, Gude grew involved in the fine arts. She participated in all forms of band, including jazz band, marching band, and pep band, and became an accomplished musician from a fairly young age.

“I was super involved. That was my life — the arts and music. I was a big theater kid, I was a big music kid. I did everything possible. I was in every honor band you could think of…” Gude said. “I was principal clarinetist [for] three of the four years in honor band. I was a four-year All-Stater on clarinet.”

Despite her love for music, just like Rezek, Gude also found a passion for teaching and language learning.

“I did think that I was going to be a music teacher for a long time. I think kind of the catalyst for me wanting to be a Spanish teacher, though, was when I was in high school,” Gude said. “I loved my music directors, but I also loved my Spanish teachers: They had a joie de vie [joy of life] for the language.”

Just like her passion for music, her love for teaching also came from a family member: her sister.

“My sister also loved learning Spanish,” Gude said. “Honestly, we have a lot of things in common, but there was just something about her love for Spanish, and my teachers’ love for sharing the language with us.”

While Gude’s career could have taken a different path were she to pursue music education rather than Spanish education, she is content with her career now.

“I think that if I went into music, teaching it, that I would just project my perfectionism on my students, but even I make mistakes every day, and I don’t know all the answers,” Gude said. “I feel like I’m kinder to myself and to my students [teaching Spanish], and I wouldn’t be that way.”

While Gude teaches music, she still tries to find a way to share her love of music with the world. She attempts to not let her role as a teacher interfere with her role as a musician.

“I have a Bachelor of Arts in Music. I don’t really use it that much anymore, so it’s really nice, like I could play in the Des Moines video game symphony orchestra… That’s probably the main way I use it now,” Gude said. “I do stuff at church. It’s hard to find ways to be involved, but I try to, since it’s not my main career right now, and it’s nice to share that.”