Grow is your space to set professional development goals, track your progress, and work toward them with the support of a mentor. This guide walks you through everything from your first login to completing your journey.
Who this guide is for
This guide is for anyone using Grow to work on their own professional development.
Step 1: Access Grow
Log in to Mana at app.makemana.com
Click the Grow icon in the left navigation bar.
The first time you visit, you'll be guided through a short 4-step profile setup before your dashboard opens.
Step 2: Set up your profile
Before you can start a Journey, Grow asks you to complete a quick setup. This takes just a few minutes and helps personalise your experience. Click Set Up Profile to begin.
About You: Write a short bio. Share a little about your background and what brought you into early childhood education.
Select Your Role: Choose your role from the list (e.g. Head Teacher, Administrator, etc). This helps Grow tailor suggestions and standards to your context.
Add Mentor: Search for and add the person who will be your mentor. Your mentor is usually your PPL, Area Manager, or Centre Manager. If you don't have one just yet, or it's not relevant to your role, feel free to skip this step.
Requirements Briefing: Based on all you have included so far, Mana will help you complete your organisation's expectations for professional growth. Read through and tick the box to acknowledge you understand the requirements and Complete Setup.
You can edit or update these configurations at anytime by selecting Teacher settings directly from your Grow tab
Step 3: Upload your files and documents
To help Mana understand more about you and provide relevant context, upload your recent annual appraisal statements, professional learning documents, and any other relevant records to the Files section. You'll find it in the top right corner of your Grow dashboard.
Step 4: Get to know your Grow dashboard
Once your profile is set up, you'll see your Grow dashboard with 5 areas:
Mentoring: your meeting notes, and one-on-one records with your mentor
Journeys: your professional development goals, actions and evidence
Observe: observations captured by your mentor during your practice
Standards: your documentation mapped against professional teaching standards
Learning: resources, uploads, and learning materials from your organisation
Step 5: Start a Journey
A Journey is a structured professional development goal you work toward over time.
Part 1: Getting Started
Go to Journeys on your dashboard, then click New journey. You'll choose between two journey types:
Professional Inquiry- Begin with wonderings about your practice. Through guided reflection and exploration, you'll discover what truly matters for your professional growth. Choose this if you want to investigate your practice before setting goals.
Direct Goal-Setting- Define your professional goals upfront, then let Mana break them into actionable milestones. Choose this if you already have clear goals in mind and want a structured pathway to achieve them. Set a specific goal and build your steps from there. In Mana, this is the equivalent of SMART goals.
Follow the path for your chosen Journey type:
If you chose Professional Inquiry: Coach Sue will open a conversation with you. She'll ask questions to help you explore and clarify your thinking, this is a reflective conversation, not a test. Be honest about where you're at. She draws on your centre's resources, your teaching history in Mana, and the professional standards relevant to your role. She'll help you arrive at a focused inquiry question and some starting goals.
If you chose Direct Goal-Setting: Mana will suggest some goals based on your teaching history and your centre's priorities. You don't have to use any of them, dismiss what doesn't fit and add your own by typing directly into the field.
Once you're happy with your goals, press Continue.
Review your goals, then press Complete & Continue at each step until you arrive at Start Journey. Mana will now generate a personalised plan for you, this takes around 20–40 seconds. It's pulling together everything it knows about you: your goals, your centre's resources, and your teaching context.
Part 2: Your Journey
Your plan will appear broken into phases (e.g. A-D), each with steps to work through over the course of your journey. Take a moment to read through it. You can edit the phases and steps generated, remove them and/or add your own. You may choose to review this with your mentor and finalise it.
Work through each step as you progress over the year. Click into the step when you're ready to link or add evidence (e.g. notes, meeting minutes, or other supporting documents). See Adding evidence to your steps below for more information.
As you mark each step complete it will get crossed off, and once all steps under a phase is complete, you can then progress to the next phase by clicking Complete & Continue.
Part 3: Wrapping Up
Once all the phases have been completed, you can discuss completion with your mentor in-person, and select Move to Wrapping Up to close it off.
Finally select Complete on the top corner of the screen to end the Journey and start a new one.
Common FAQs:
Can you have more than one goal?
Yes, one journey can include multiple goals, blending goals is intentional in Mana, to support deeper thinking and more meaningful practice change.How do I choose an SMART goal?
Choose Direct Goal-Setting option. In Mana, this is the global term for SMART goals it's the same approach.
For more FAQs please visit the following article: Common questions about Grow
Important things to note:
Working with Coach Sue
Coach Sue is Mana's AI guide. She'll ask you questions, suggest goals based on what you share, and help you shape your journey steps. She draws on your centre's strategic priorities, your teaching role, and relevant professional standards. You don't have to follow every suggestion, think of it as a guide.
Adding evidence to your steps
Each Journey is made up of steps, specific actions you're taking to work toward your goal. As you work through each step, you add evidence to show what you've done and what you've learned.
1. Open your active journey from Journeys.2. Find the step you want to update.
3. Click Link evidence if you would like to link any documents you've created on Mana (including learning stories and meeting notes) or directly write notes, upload a photo, write a reflection, or attach a document.
4. Save your evidence, it's stored against that step and visible to your mentor.
Your mentoring sessions
Your mentor will check in with you regularly as you work through your journey. You can see notes from your one-on-one sessions in the Mentoring section of your Grow dashboard. These notes are shared between you and your mentor, they're a record of your conversations and any agreed next steps.
Your teacher observations
The Observe section of your Grow dashboard is where teacher observations are recorded. If your role requires a formal observation, Mana will suggest a scheduled date, usually towards the end of your journey period, but you can complete one at any time. When your mentor observes your practice, they can use the capture button to record their notes directly in this section. Check in here to see what's been captured and when your next observation is due.
Your professional standards
The Standards section of your Grow dashboard maps your practice against the professional teaching standards relevant to your role, including the teaching standards and Te Whāriki. As you work through Mana, evidence from your journeys, observations, and documentation is automatically gathered and linked to the relevant standards. You can click into any standard to see what evidence is there and where there are gaps. If you notice an area that's light that's worth raising with your mentor or factoring into your next goal. You can also link evidence manually using the link button if something hasn't been picked up automatically.
Your professional learning
The Learning section of the Grow dashboard is your personal professional development record in Mana. Upload anything you've completed throughout the year, courses, certificates, workshops, professional readings. As you build this out, Mana draws on it when suggesting goals and tailoring your next journey. The more you add, the more Mana understands where you've been and where you want to go. Think of it as your PD file, kept up to date as you go rather than all at once at the end of the year.
Monitor your progress over time
To see how you're tracking across your Grow cycle, press View progress over time on your Grow dashboard. This shows your week-on-week progress across all five areas so that you can see at a glance where you're building momentum and where there's more to do.
Your Grow Checklist:
☐ Set up your profile
☐ Upload your relevant files and documents to the Files section
☐ Begin a Journey
☐ Complete setting up your goal
☐ Define the phases and steps of your Journey
☐ Complete each step and link / add evidence for each as you progress
☐ Capture mentoring sessions in the Mentoring section
☐ Capture teacher observations in the Observe section
☐ Review your professional standards in the Standards section
☐ Upload professional learning in the Learning section
☐ Complete the Journey at the end of your professional growth cycle to reset the dashboard (happens annually) and begin a new cycle.