How can I format my disk to APFS if I can’t boot in Recovery Mode? I am trying to upgrade my 2012 MacBook Pro from Mojave to Catalina. I swapped out the hard drive a few months ago for an SSD. 

When I try to go through the updater, I get the warning “This volume is not formatted as APFS.” 

I have seen online you can change the partition of the disk by booting into Recovery Mode. But when I do that, I get a spinning globe which then asks me to log into the Wi-Fi. I don’t know why, but it rejects the Wi-Fi password I put in, even though it works on my iPhone.

Is there any way to format the disk as APFS, without going into Recovery Mode? Can I just wipe the whole disk or something and start from scratch, somehow?
If you see the spinning globe icon at boot, and are prompted for an Internet connection, then technically you're in Internet Recovery Mode, which doesn't rely upon any local partition to boot.

If you can get your device connected to your network, either by using an Ethernet adapter or temporarily using a different or open wireless network, you'll be able to format the internal drive to APFS.

You may also wish to investigate using Mac Deploy Stick to create a bootable USB installer.