let's begin with our top story. some experts estimate that as many as 85% of us share a fear that prevents us from not only reaching our full potential, but even just being happy in our day-to-day lives. amelia tells us more. >> here's a quick, very unscientific test. >> trying new things can kind of be intimidating sometimes. >> depends what it is, honestly. if it's out of my boundaries, i'm not willing to do that. >> i guess it depends on the mistake i am making. if it is a very big mistake it's hard for me to move on from that. >> it's hard for me at first, but then i get over it. >> i would say most of the time i can usually let things go and move on with my life. >> yeah, i mean, currently, in my life, there are many mistakes and you just, like, you got to let them go to keep on moving forward.

from things pretty quickly. >> sometimes i get nervous to make eye contact with new people, so -- but i try. >> yeah, i usually try. >> not all the time, but it depends i guess, if i feel comfortable or not. >> i would say that in most situations, i'm fairly confident. if you answered "yes" to these questions, then you probably don't have an issue with self-esteem. but a surprising number of teens aren't so self assured. in fact, 3 out of 4 girls with low self-esteem are likely to fall into hurtful habits, like drinking, smoking, cutting themselves, or even bullying. almost half of teen boys with low self-esteem try to improve their body image with protein supplements. basically, low self-esteem comes from lacking confidence. when "teen kids news" continues, we'll get advice from someone you may never imagine has low

we'll be right back. >> we're talking about

and to give us some advice is k. lee graham -- she's miss teen usa 2014. welcome. >> thank you. thanks for having me >> you were a straight-a student in high school as well as class valedictorian. and of course, you became miss teen usa. so, i guess lack of confidence hasn't been a problem for you... >> i actually suffered from very low confidence throughout middle school and high school. i, you know, was very upset because i didn't look like people in magazines or even the popular kids in my class. i wasn't very popular, and, um, i just let it really get to me. but i had this little change in high school, and, um, a little later on that helped me develop good self confidence and self esteem. >> how did you become aware that other teens were having issues with self esteem? >> i just -- i really noticed among my friends, i thought at first that i was the only one struggling with this, and i started talking to some of my best friends and also my sister -- i have an older sister who's a year older than me -- and my mom, and i realize that this is a struggle that everyone

has no matter how old your are. there's always moments in your life whenever you feel like, you know, there is someone better than you or prettier than you or smarter than you, and that you won't be able to measure up. so, i decided to not think that way anymore, and i decided to change it through my "live beautifully" campaign. >> so, tell us more about that campaign. >> yeah -- so, "live beautifully," like i said, started because of my idea that, you know, teens shouldn't have to suffer from self poor self confidence issues. i found out that when i stopped chasing this idea of being pretty, and that my appearance is all that matters in life, that i started developing good self confidence. so, i learned to find beauty not in appearance but based on my character. >> and that brings us to you -- you have a three-part approach. what's part 1? >> part 1 of live beautifully is embracing yourself. so, that means not being perfect but being perfectly happy with who you are by taking a focus on your character traits,

and living a healthy lifestyle, instead of, you know, chasing after some appearance that you see in a magazine -- because we aren't our looks -- we are the person that we are inside. >> well, you actually have a nice way of putting it. you say that "appearance doesn't equal beauty; character equals beauty." >> absolutely. >> now, there's a second part to your approach, and that is embracing others. tell us about that. >> yeah, so, embracing others really developed off of embracing yourself -- i think for someone to really live a beautiful life, their life can't be all about themselves. so, whenever i started reaching out and really going out of my way to love other people, or to be kind, or to stick up for someone that's being bullied or put down, that's when i started to discover that, you know, i felt better about myself and i was also making a difference in peoples' lives. so, i was taking the focus off of me and off of my insecurities and worries, and started to put it on people that, you know, i could actually make a difference in their lives,

and it just changed everything for the better. >> but also, isn't it a part of "embracing others" that you shouldn't go around comparing yourself? >> absolutely. i think -- comparison, i heard, is like -- comparison is the thief of joy. so, embracing others also includes, you know, being confident in who you are without having to, like, look around and have to match up with someone. and for young women, that means not looking at other girls and trying to put them down or trying to be better than them, but it's supporting and encouraging each other, so that we can all find success and happiness. >> and then the third part is embracing your community. tell us about that. >> so, embrace your community is kind of the last part in this three-point pillar, and that is, to me, it's standing up and being a leader in the community for different causes that, you know, are really important. so, i used to really be very involved in my children's ministry back when i lived in south carolina, volunteering with the kids every sunday. and i also was very involved

with my school doing different campaigns and causes, and whenever i started doing that, i, again, noticed that i was taking the focus off of me, putting it towards something that was important, and in turn was living a beautiful life and chasing after that instead of chasing after a beautiful appearance. and that was really the final part in my kind of transformation to find self confidence and good self esteem. >> interesting -- you know, in "the wizard of oz," when it came to self esteem, it was easy for the scarecrow, the tin man and the lion to transform themselves and improve themselves. the wizard just had to give them some gifts. is building up your confidence really that easy? >> oh, absolutely -- it's not just, you know, like, a wave of a wand and, "oh, all of a sudden, everything's great and amazing." you can win a crown of miss teen usa and still feel insecure some days because, you know, you see someone that you think may look prettier than you. but for me, i've discovered that, that's not what's important, and also that this is a journey. there's going to be ups and downs and there's going to be days when you feel terrible, there's going to be days when you feel great.

at the center and at the core of your being, though, you have to know that appearance isn't everything, beauty comes from continually living and chasing after the right things in life, and it's a journey. >> good point. thank you so much for giving us that information. >> thank you so much for having me. >> when it comes to self-esteem, you might also want to keep in mind a quote from eleanor roosevelt, wife of president franklin roosevelt. she said, "no one can make you feel inferior without your consent." definitely, words to live by. for "teen kids news," i'm amelia. >> most american students choose to learn spanish or french.

up fast. >> it's the most widely spoken language in the world, and yet, for many years, few schools in the u.s.2offered it. but as ellie reports, that's

now changing. >> fireworks... paper... the compass. these are just some of the many inventions to come from china. here's another one: mandarin. in a country that's said to have more than 2,000 dialects, mandarin is china's official language. [ speaking chinese ] when rong rong le started teaching mandarin to american students back in the 1980s, scenes like this were rare. but as china has become a major economic power, interest in its language has grown dramatically. [ speaking chinese ] >> i think their ability to converse fluently in mandarin will serve them incredibly well, in a variety of ways going forward. >> i knew that when i grew up, like, um, chinese would be, like, a good thing to just have in, like, my tool belt, i guess, for when, like, applying for

[ speaking chinese ] >> learning mandarin not only prepares you for the future, it proves you can take on a big challenge. all languages require you to pronounce words correctly, but mandarin goes further. you also need to pronounce them with the correct tone. >> there's first tone, second tone, third tone, and fourth tone, and those are all unique ways to pronounce a word. so you can put together a sentence that's, like, ma, ma, ma, ma, and that means, "mom scolded the numb horse." it's the same word. >> if you don't pronounce the tone correctly, the meaning will be wrong. it will cause a lot of misunderstanding. >> so, do you have to be a language genius to learn chinese? >> definitely not. because over the years, actually, i have been teaching chinese total for 25 years, and so many kids, they have learned, from all kind of background. i just, sometimes, i'm amazed

they can do what they can do. [ singing in chinese ] >> these middle school students aren't just learning to speak in chinese, they're learning to sing in chinese. >> every friday, it's the quiz, and after quiz i want them to relax. so i will teach them songs. >> singing and speaking mandarin are just the beginning. learning the written form of the language is even harder. >> for the most part, i think reading and writing is a lot harder, since chinese, um, isn't written in letters. it's written in characters, and each character has its own specific meaning. it's a little bit complicated. >> "a little bit complicated?" that's like saying the great wall of china is a little bit long. in mandarin, there are thousands of characters to master. so, students start by learning what's called pin-yin. [ speaking chinese ] it's a way of writing down sounds using letters from our alphabet.

the characters mean, and then how to say it in pinyin, so there's a lot of different aspects to it than just learning uh, a different language. >> there are also a lot of different reasons why students decide to learn mandarin. >> the culture and the language has always really appealed to me. >> i really want to go to ina. it's somewhere that i've always wanted to go, so i hope i'll get to go there one day and use it. [ speaking chinese ] >> chinese is a journey. experts say it's probably twice as hard to master as spanish or french. but that's not stopping many american students. the number of us learning mandarin has increased tenfold in recent years. zai jian. >> if you want to know how much a hummingbird weighs, check your pockets. a hummingbird weighs about what a penny weighs -- less than one tenth of an ounce. but they are hungry little creatures. everyday, they consume more than their weight in nectar. for us, that's like eating more

than 33 large pizzas in a day. >> they are three little letters, but they can spell the difference between life and death -- cpr.

stand for.edical emergencies happen. that's why knowing what to do is so important. >> what is "cpr?" >> cpr stands for cardiopulmonary resuscitation and that's a really big term that basically means cardio -- heart; pulmonary -- lungs, resuscitation -- try to bring back. we provide a combination of chest compressions and rescue breaths to manually circulate blood throughout somebody's body. because when they are in cardiac arrest it means their heart's not working, so we need to work for it. >> is it something that we all can learn?

red cross course when you take the full thing, you learn how to give breaths, but absolutely anybody can learn how to do hands-only cpr. and that's what we're gonna practice today. >> okay, i'm ready. what do we do first? >> step one, we want to make sure this person is actually unconscious, because they might be napping, i don't know. so, let's find out. hello? can you hear me? are you okay? hello? if they don't respond, that's a problem. so i am going to tell somebody else to go call 9-1-1, please, this person's unconscious, and come back to me. then i need to see if they are breathing, so i am going to open the airway with a head tilt, chin lift, get really close to their nose and mouth to feel for breath on my cheek, look at the chest for any movement. and i am going to do this for ten whole seconds because i want to make sure it's normal breathing. if they are not breathing, we begin hands-only cpr. that's compressions, not breaths. and i know i'm wearing these gloves right here, but in real life you can do them with

or without. in the red cross course, we advocate for gloves because they help prevent disease transmission. okay, two hands right in the center of the chest, your shoulders directly over your hands for support. you're going to press at least 2 inches deep for an adult, about 2 inches deep for a child, and about 1 1/2 inches for an infant, at a rate of 100 compressions per minute, over and over and over again, until that ambulance gets here. >> sounds tiring. >> it is, it is a little tiring. so, i'll do a few. one, and two, and three, and four, and five, and six, and seven, and eight, and nine, and ten, and eleven, and twelve, thirteen, fourteen. right, so we keep going over and over until the ambulance gets there. in real life, you might get tired as you mentioned. and if that happens, i really don't want you to pass out next to the person, so please take a break. you know, shake it out, stand up, do whatever you need to, and when you can, go back to it. want to give it a shot? >> yeah, sure. >> come on in.

one and two and three and four and five and six and seven and eight and nine and ten eleven. nice! so, it is really hard, you want to and hear that click every single time, because that's when you know you've hit two inches. >> and how do you know you're doing it hard enough on a real person? >> on a real person the most common mistake is that they don't actually compress deep enough. so, think "hard and fast," don't worry about the depth. you might have to go a little harder than you think you do. that's the only thing i can say about that. all right? so, when you would you stop those compressions? because in real life you don't stop after twelve -- so when do you stop? >> um... you just keep going. >> you keep going, that's right! you don't stop. when that ambulance gets there they'll tell you when to stop so that they can take over. again, if yoyoget tired you can stop. but other than that, that is what you're going to be doing to keep blood circulating for this person. >> to find out more about cpr and first aid, there's a link to the american red cross on our website.

for "tkn," i'm alexa. >> perfect games are very rare in baseball history, but they have occurred before. in fact, 23 different major league baseball pitchers have pitched perfect games. in case you don't know, a perfect game is when a pitcher retires every batter he faces. this has only happened once in world series play, however, as in 1956, game 5, dodgers versus yankees, don larson of the new york yankees retired every single dodger that he faced. 27 men came up and 27 men got out. i'm matt with "teen kids news." >> this message is brought to you by the national road safety foundation. they want you to keep your hands on the wheel, your eyes on the road and your mind on driving. [ bell ringing ] >> all right guys! so guess what, the dance is this saturday! >> are you going? >> yes! let's all go together.

>> okay, so, you know the theme tonight is all school spirit. everything spirit. [ heartbeat ] >> rachel? rachel? hey, rach! >> seriously? >> oh, yeah, face paint. rachel, you're -- >> face paint. >> rachel, rachel. [ heartbeat gets louder ] [ heartbeat ] >> an avocado, people always ask me -- is it a fruit or is it

in my kitchen, it's pudding.rab your measuring cups and spatulas -- we have another cool recipe from the culinary institute of america. >> hi, everyone. remember earlier, how we were talking about if an avocado is a fruit or a vegetable? and that it doesn't matter because in my kitchen it's a pudding? today i am going to show you how to make that avocado pudding. it's very simple and only three ingredients. here we have one avocado, half a cup of greek yogurt, and one tablespoon of honey.

it's nice and thick and perfect for a pudding consistency. okay, now we're going to back up to where i showed you how to seed an avocado. we're going to take an avocado and we're going to be using a knife. be careful, be gentle. just place the knife in the avocado, and we'll roll along the seed until you get to the other side. remove the knife. place the avocado in your hands. twist a little bit, and then open it up. now, we are going to be removing the seed from the avocado. if you've never done this before, don't be afraid. you can ask someone to help you. it's very easy, and i'll show you exactly how you can do it in a very safe way. the way i do it, i like to have

a towel to put the avocado on, so i have a little stability for the avocado. place the part with the seed on to the towel. and gently place the knife over the seed, and then give it a little bit of a whack. now, take the seed with the avocado and the knife, and twist it just a little bit. see? very easy. now that we have the seed attached to the knife, we'll take that same towel, place it over the seed, and gently remove the knife out of the seed. [ applause ] so, let's put it together. we'll simply put everything into this food processor. putting our avocados...

and our honey... and give it a whirl. just keep going until it is nice and smooth. just pour it right into the bowl. it's a beautiful green color. and there's two reasons you want to eat this immediately -- one, it's too tasty to wait, and two, avocados turn brown after a while, so you wanna eat them as soon as you can. mmm... you wouldn't expect avocado to be in a pudding, but it is absolutely delicious.

from the culinary institute of america. have a great day! >> i'll have to give that recipe a try. well, that wraps it up for now, for everyone here at "teen kids news", thanks for

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