Frustrated

I’m having issues with my unmotivated freshmen. Before the break, they turned in their Romeo and Juliet packets, which have been awful. Pages were stapled upside down, notes making fun of students were scrawled across pages, some had shiny gum wrappers stuck to the side, and it was low quality work. I gave them three full days in class. They had to annotate, which we did the to and with so long that they begged for the by and I obliged. I gave clearly written instructions with the purpose statement on the top and yet they didn’t follow it. When I had them grade their work ethic, one student said that she did the bare minimum because she just didn’t care. I get that vibe from many of them, and it’s something I want to address. I’ve been thinking about showing them a project that was done well and one that wasn’t, not from their class, and having them discuss their thoughts in order to show them that the quality of the work reflects on the student. I know they might not like Romeo and Juliet but it was a great way to see how annotation can lead to understanding. They did well on annotating when I was standing over them, but they put in the bare minimum for the project. On the test they had to annotate a new chunk of lines and they summarized the lines instead of doing what we worked on. On the summarize line section, they gave me plot. On the part where they explain their project scene and its purpose, some couldn’t tell me what happened. One said that Capulet said stuff to the 2nd servant and they did stuff. In life, unless you are a professional, most people work jobs they don’t like, but they do it to pay the bills. Even if you don’t like something, you still have to put forth effort. How do I communicate to them the importance of taking pride in one’s work? I mean the girl who shared she did the bare minimum caused her partner’s grades to fall, and she doesn’t care.