Nicole Mullen dances with her daughter, Jasmine (left) and other girls at the New Hope Academy in Franklin, Tenn. (Tennessean photo) | ZOOM |

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - "Baby Girl" - the song - came before Nicole C. Mullen's Baby Girls Club, a group of 9- to 16-year-olds who meet after school.

"Actually, I've had baby girls hanging with me before the song," says Mullen, who has taught dance to teen girls for about 10 years. They are a fixture at her concerts.

Part of the reason for starting the club this year was to have quality time with her daughter, Jasmine, 9.

"I want to see her bloom and grow. They all have to hug me before they leave," Mullen says.

On a crisp fall day, the singer and her choreographer, Robin Sanders, back out of Mullen's garage in a silver Land Rover, loaded with baby strollers, bags of sewing scraps and supplies, diaper bags, and their two babies in car seats - all headed for the weekly Baby Girls Club in nearby Franklin.

"Oh no, I forgot the snacks!" exclaims Mullen, as they arrive at New Hope Academy, a faith-based community school, where her two older children are students. Nearly half of its students come from low-income families.

Someone is sent out for juice and cookies, and Mullen races to the front door as school lets out.

"I gotta go get my girls," she says, passing out hugs to girls wearing pastel-colored "Baby Girls Club" T-shirts, printed with her picture on the front.

"I try to impart self-worth, that God really does love you," Mullen says. "So we talk, we read the Bible, we sew and we dance."

An assistant teacher starts the girls dancing - a hip, choreographed routine to Mullen's hit, "Baby Girl," while Mullen is busy consoling her fussy baby, who is cutting four teeth.

"Sing it to me, ladies," she calls, joining the girls, and they try to follow her funky moves. She learned how to dance, she says, "just from looking at people. I never took training. I was like, you want to get better? Get someone who's better than yourself."

So she hired Sanders.

"I graduated from college, not knowing what I was going to do," Sanders says. They met at Kids Across America, a sports inner city Christian camp in Branson, Mo., where Sanders was working as a counselor during college.

"We just hit it off. She said, 'I'm looking for a choreographer and a dancer,'" says Sanders. "She's the best."

The two hours are over quickly. They break with a prayer, lying in a circle on the floor on their stomachs because, Mullen tells her charges, "We respect God when we pray to him, because he's the king of all."

Each says a little prayer, eyes squeezed shut.

"I do this mainly because of what Cecelia Jackson said to me a long time ago," Mullen says, referring to a childhood mentor. "I remember saying, if I'm ever in a position where girls look up to me like I look up to her, I want to be as gentle with their hearts and as responsible with their hearts as she was with mine."

Janelle Gelfand