This article examines how three Nashville educational support professionals' conceptions of empowerment map onto their civic expectations for their Latino/a students and themselves. It argues that these expectations are inversely related, with students standing as surrogates for professionals' civic selves or professionals acting as civic surrogates for students. The article shows how professionals' civic identities are formed in relation to their students and the classrooms where they work--complicating models of empowerment, citizenship, and out-of-school settings.