Fifty people became United States citizens in front of junior high students Friday morning in Green Cove Springs. 

The Clay County School District said the goal for Green Cove Springs Junior High School was to give students an authentic experience of watching people become U.S. citizens. 

“I’ve become a part of this great nation,” Angelo Hankrolle said. 

Hankrolle is one of the 50 new U.S. citizens Friday morning in Clay County. He said he began his process to citizenship six years ago, coming to the First Coast from the Bahamas in a process that Chief Judge Marcia Morales Howard says is not an easy one. 

Howard grants the official motion to make a new citizen’s dream a reality.

“They’ve got to take tests, go through interviews, it’s a really long process, but they really want to be our fellow citizens,” Howard said. “So for them, they’ll all tell you the journey is well worth it.”

Green Cove Springs Junior High says there is a purpose to all of this happening in their school cafeteria the past three years. Civics teacher Michael Taft noted that you can only do so much with textbooks teaching students how to fulfil their duty as a citizen of the United States — you have to make it authentic.

“They don’t learn by looking at a bunch of words, they need to see it,” Taft said.

As for the brand new U.S. citizens, Hankrolle says it’s a memory he’ll hold on to for years. He says experiencing the Oath of Allegiance at the school made an impact on him. 

The new U.S. citizens came from 29 different countries, ranging from Alabania all the way to Vietnam.