This study examined 10 urban middle school teachers' practices to motivate their emergent bilingual students (or English-language learners) and the ways in which their practices were associated with their positioning of their students in reading intervention classrooms. Our findings showed that teacher positioning that afforded or constrained their own and their students' various thoughts and behaviors was associated with the teachers' various practices to support emergent bilingual students' autonomy. The teachers' positioning of themselves and their students as cultural beings, by rejecting dominant narratives, was associated with their support of autonomy on cognitive and managerial levels and was frequently combined with autonomy support on cultural levels. By considering critical race theory and achievement motivation theory, our findings suggest the need to pay critical attention to teachers' positioning in sociocultural and political contexts to better support their practices to motivate and engage emergent bilingual students.