Students at Armstrong Elementary in Reston built a remembrance tree in the school lobby to mark the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Every class at the Lake Newport Road school read "This Very Tree," a picture book by Sean Rubin, then wrote reflections on paper leaves and placed them on a tree display, The Reston Letter reported. The school's website featured the activity in an Oct. 7 post.

Each student wrote a word or short phrase describing how the book made them feel or what they learned about the tragedy. Those words became the leaves on a growing paper tree, now standing in the school's main lobby.

The book tells the story of a Callery pear tree, known as the Survivor Tree, that was planted in the plaza beneath the World Trade Center in the 1970s. When the towers fell on Sept. 11, 2001, the tree was buried in rubble. It was the last living thing pulled from the site in October 2001, nursed back to health at a Bronx nursery and eventually returned to the 9/11 Memorial.

Staff at Armstrong adapted the reading for kindergarten students to make the story and discussion age-appropriate, the school said. Older students engaged with the full text.

Rubin told NPR in September 2022 that the story "opened up a space for people to discuss their personal recollections of the tragedy and to root it back in that local, immediate area." He noted that the attacks carried both a New York dimension and a Northern Virginia dimension, given the strike on the Pentagon.

That local connection runs through Armstrong Elementary, led by Principal Jim Quinn. The school sits at 11900 Lake Newport Road and feeds into Herndon Middle School and Herndon High School.

The paper tree, filled with students' leaf reflections, remains on display in the lobby.