In light of the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, the sudden shift to online offerings of higher education courses that would typically be taught face-to-face, has university administrators, educators, and students alike scrambling to prepare. The pedagogical movement towards active learning has always found a friend in the natural sciences, with laboratory and field components being standard to many programs. For instructors of ecology and evolution, the shift to online-only learning planned for autumn 2020 imposes limitations. As a first-time instructor teaching a course on evolutionary processes at the time of the COVID-19 outbreak, concurrent with being a student of a mentored teaching course and doctoral student in evolutionary ecology, I offer my perspective as a learner and an educator to guide decision-making by instructors. I emphasize the need to consider accessibility, equity, and compassion and the importance of building trust and a safe learning environment in the absence of face-to-face instruction. I describe some evolution-related resources and approaches to assessment I applied in the pivot-to-online context of March 2020, including COVID-19 teaching tools. Finally, I encourage scholars of evolution and ecology to bridge in contemporary scholarship on pedagogy to help teach the next generation of biologists.