Inside the Zoo

Olivia Kim • February 28th, 2026

While most students used their winter break to relax, a group of seven students spent their break working on producing videos for a new project at Peninsula: “Inside the Zoo”. “Inside the Zoo” is a student run broadcast that covers the “four A’s”: athletics, academics, activities and arts, with the intention of highlighting different events at the school, especially ones that do not get recognized as much. “Inside the Zoo” is heavily inspired by the previous Peninsula broadcast program, “Eye of the Panther” that ran from 2007 to 2020, similarly covering events in depth that are happening at Peninsula such as Willenburg, pep rallies and student achievements. While not yet confirmed, “Inside the Zoo” is projected to be a class students can take next year where they can receive class credit. The broadcast is released biweekly on YouTube and is meant to be shown during third or fourth period.

The development of “Inside the Zoo” first rooted last spring when athletic director Dr. DJ Clovis suggested the idea of creating a program that highlighted the students, staff and events at Peninsula to seniors Kiyan Khaleeli and Caroline Fiamengo. After watching an elementary school broadcast program called “TK2 News” directed by Ricky Koga, they were motivated to start “Inside the Zoo”. In October, Clovis initiated the process of creating the program and held a meeting, asking students that he has worked with from the Athletic Advisory Committee to bring friends who were interested in joining. The small group of students who attended the meeting established the groundwork of the broadcast by developing the structure and advertisement for the episodes before releasing the first one. While “Inside the Zoo” is still in its initial phases, Fiamengo described how the program is already a special aspect of Peninsula.

“I think the biggest difference is that we call ourselves a broadcasting program just as a title, but our main goal is to highlight parts of Peninsula in an exciting way,” Fiamengo said. “How I described ‘Inside the Zoo’ to new people joining [is that it is like] taking the Peninsula Instagram and mixing it with the Daily Bulletin in a fun way to watch. We really just wanted to focus on things happening at school and showcasing student stories and their passions.”

Unlike the text-based Daily Bulletin or the Panther View and the static posts of the Peninsula Instagram, “Inside the Zoo” presents information through video in order to keep students engaged. Rather than simply listing dates and brief descriptions of multiple events, “Inside the Zoo” makes a few detailed segments describing the events and featuring students. In order to keep students engaged, it also features athletes and peers participating in short games or challenge segments. Despite these clips only being a few minutes long, they are only possible due to hours worth of production. Just as they worked throughout their winter break, students involved with “Inside the Zoo” give up many Panther Times and lunches to plan, film and edit new episodes.

Before each episode, the team must decide which of the many school events they will cover. The team brainstorms what they want to include in each video on a shared Google document, writing down the various current events at school. Then, the directors and Clovis pick one event for each category – athletics, academics, activities or arts – based on which ones seem most engaging for students and need more coverage. The entire production process for a video takes about two weeks: one week for planning and another for filming and editing. Filming for the hosts, sophomore Kira Sproat and senior Benson Webster, takes place in room 205 and other footage taken outside the room is filmed by the on-camera team. The “Inside the Zoo” filming room originally was an empty classroom given to Clovis. The producers transformed the bare classroom to a lively filming room with light fixtures, backdrops and a teleprompter for the hosts. Originally starting with seven people, the “Inside the Zoo” team has now expanded to 32 people divided into six groups including the on-camera crew, film, communications, marketing, scriptwriters and graphic design teams to spread out the work, produce videos faster and bring forward more new creative ideas. Sproat described how the team’s growth has impacted “Inside the Zoo”.

“We have a lot more time now because there are other people working on [the broadcast], and it has become more inclusive and collaborative,” Sproat said. “We work better together because there are so many people in the room with so many different ideas. It has also created a bigger community and an environment that [‘Inside the Zoo’] is becoming a real thing. The whole point of ‘Inside the Zoo’ is to highlight that anyone can be a part of anything.”

As they continue to learn about video broadcasting and release more episodes, Khaleel and Flamengo’s main goal is to create an impactful broadcast program that can continue for years after they graduate and show how unique the Peninsula community is. Expanding on this, Clovis described the purpose of “Inside the Zoo” and the message they wanted to send out.

“Inside the Zoo is a way for students, parents, alumni and community members to see what we are doing here at Pen,” Clovis said. “We do a lot of fun, different things at Pen. The kids here are so gracious, thoughtful and kind, so let us show that. We all have our merit, we all have our place and if we can engage with one person who was not engaged with the school before, I think we have done our job.”