I also taught Science in high school and college, teaching evolution three times as a Substitute (I cant imagine WHY a teacher might want to take the ONE day they covered the subject in the entire curriculum OFF! LOL!(also twice the one day they talked about Jesus in History class)). I taught them about natural selection of genetic variation and touched on Molecular Evolution and genetic “clocks” to establish phylogenetic trees. It was a CLEAR reflection of what I had recently been taught as the most current work going on in the field.
The entire PE theory or “gloss” on neo darwinism (as Dawkins describes it) derived from microevolutionary (changes within a species, particularly at the cellular level) studies in the 1950s and which continue today.
The synthesis theory, which now predominates, indicates that microevolution and macroevolution (species level and above) are one process. In fact, creationists don’t uniformly deny microevolutionary processes, but they do deny macroevolution. Mainstream scientists insist, correctly, that macroevolution has occurred and speciation is recognized at the point where a major morph occurs (i.e, feathers on dinosaurs). Creationists deny major morphing ever occurs; major morphing (I’m making that term up, btw), is the “punctuated” part of the PE theory. Otherwise, it’s basically gradualist. In other words, as Dawkins has indicated PE is really not a theory of evolution at all, but a way to describe particular changes that are only observable—as you state—in a fossil record as changes within a species are not visible in the record. On the other hand, PE can be noted quite frequently in virus studies, I would think.