This guide is for mentors who have been assigned to support one or more educators through their Grow journeys. As a mentor in Grow, you're the person who supports mentees through their professional development Journeys. This guide covers everything you need from finding your mentees to recording meeting notes and helping them reach their goals.

Before you can access your mentees, you'll need to complete your own Grow profile setup. This only takes a few minutes.

1. Log in to Mana at app.makemana.com and click the Grow icon in the left navigation bar.

2. You'll be prompted to set up your profile. Click Set Up Profile to begin.

3. About You: Write a short bio about your background and what brought you into early childhood education.

4. Select Your Role: Choose the role that best fits your position. This helps Grow tailor suggestions and standards to your context.

5. Add Your Mentor: Mentors can also have their own mentor. If someone supports your professional development, add them here. Skip if not relevant.

6. Requirements Briefing: Read through your organisation's professional growth expectations, tick the box, and press Complete Setup.

7. You can edit or update your profile at any time by selecting Teacher settings from your Grow dashboard.

From your Grow dashboard, you'll see a list of the educators who have added you as their mentor. From here you can:

Click on a mentee's name to open their growth cycle on Mana. You'll land on their Grow dashboard and see five areas:

Journeys generally move through three phases (according to set up): an opening phase where goals and steps are set, a middle phase where most of the work and evidence-gathering happens, and a completion phase where the educator reflects and wraps up.
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Your role throughout is to check in regularly, respond to evidence, and help the educator reflect on what they've learned and achieved.

Record notes directly in Grow during your professional development conversation with a mentee. You can type your notes or use the voice recording option, speak and Mana will transcribe it for you, so you're not typing everything up after a busy day:
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1. Open the mentee's Grow profile and tap the Mentoring section.
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2. Schedule a one-on-one.

3. Open the one-on-one.
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4. Prepare with Coach Sue or add preparation notes or reflective notes manually ahead of the meeting (if needed).
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5. Click Start Notes and press the voice recording button to record your meeting, Mana will transcribe it. Alternatively, you can upload a photo of written notes for Mana to transcribe.

6. Click Next to save the notes.
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7. Under Next steps select Generate follow-ups for Mana to identify next steps automatically or select Continue meeting notes to add more.

8. You can review the meeting notes by selecting Review meeting notes at any time.
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If your mentoring involves observing an educator in practice, capture that observation in the Observe section of Grow:
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1. Open the mentee's Grow profile and tap the Observe section.
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2. Schedule an observation.

3. Open the practice observation.
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4. Capture with Coach Sue or capture your observations manually with a jotting.

5. Mark the requirement Complete when finalised. It is linked to the educator's Grow profile and visible to them.

When a mentee is ready to complete their Journey, you can review this together in-person and confirm their completion by letting them know they can mark their Journey on Mana as Complete.

Getting started:

☐ Complete your own Grow profile setup (About You, Role, Mentor, Requirements Briefing)

☐ Go to your Grow dashboard and confirm your mentees are listed

☐ Click into each mentee's profile and review their active journey, goals, and current steps

At the start of each Journey:

☐ Meet with your mentee to review the Journey plan

☐ Confirm the phases and steps make sense for where they're at, suggest adjustments if needed

☐ Record notes from this first meeting in the Mentoring section

Throughout the Journey:

☐ Check in regularly on each mentee's progress and evidence

☐ Record notes from each one-on-one meeting (voice recording or typed)

☐ Complete a teacher practice observations (as needed) and save it to their profile in the Observe section

☐ Leave notes on steps or evidence where useful

At Journey completion:

☐ Have the closing conversation with your mentee in-person

☐ Record final notes in the Mentoring section

☐ Confirm to mentee to mark Journey completion