Who died and left me in charge of teaching the mechanisms of evolution to a pack of gum-chewing, skinny-jeaned, re-tweeting 18-year olds?

How clever of me to dive (or belly flop) into the deep-end with my very first teaching experience. Sure, like all grad students, I led tutorials and I have inducted many shaky-handed undergraduate researchers into the world of the lab, but I never had the responsibility of figuring out what was supposed to be learned or how I would know that students had learned it. And now, the results of my first experiments in this area may determine whether or not some spotty kid believes in evolution or not. Oh, and did I mention I'll be videotaped for the purposes of critiquing my performance? No pressure.

Luckily I have the keenest and most massive roadcrew ever assembled to help a poor post-doc bumble their way through a teaching assignment. It’s called the FIRST IV network and it’s a

…national dissemination project designed to reform undergraduate science education through professional development of postdocs who will design an introductory biology course for a learner-centered classroom.

In addition to ‘disseminating’ their reform through me and my cohort of 100 elite-crime-fighting postdocs, FIRST IV intends to establish a formal network of next-gen biology teachers. We will be there to provide support and ideas to each other for the rest of our natural lives. Yes, I have joined a cult.